Thursday, February 24, 2011

campaign4ice at Miranda House College


In order to make the youths aware about entering the ICE contact in their mobile, the team of campaign4ice headed by Payal and accompanied by Jyotsana, Shefali and Chandra Mohan today halted at the prestigious Miranda College of Delhi University which has its distinguished alumni like Mrs Sheila Dixit (Chief Minister of Delhi).

Team set up their kiosk near the college canteen area. Initially the students thought us of some new company promoting the product. But when our team approached
them and told them about the concept of ICE they were happy and kind enough to feed ICE in their mobile phone. But as soon they found the ICE concept interesting and helpful it created a buzz and within few minutes we started having huge crowd at our kiosk with lots of interest among students as well as the teachers.



Campaign4ice has also developed stickers which are placed at the back of the mobile phone symbolizing the phone as ICE protected. These stickers were posted at the mobile of the students here.

In all today 106 students supported campaign4ice. The most important attraction for the students were the Coupons given by Café Coffee Day which is also a sponsor of this campaign.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

All About ICE

Let me tell you a story. It was a summer evening at Dehradun. I was a pillion rider to my brother while crossing the traffic jam at the densely populated railway station area. Suddenly we saw a person lying on the road, outside a petrol pump and his scooter lying with revolving rear wheels at some distance. It took us no time to realize that the person has just met with an accident. Local trespassers started gathering within minutes.

Somebody informed the police and some youths in the crowd suggested informing the victim’s family. We picked up his mobile phone and frantically looked for his kin’s mobile number in vain among more than 200 contacts. No number revealed the relationship with the victim. We then thought of calling the last dialed number which I remember was written as Vikas Gupta. We then called Vikas. He told us that he was a person who called him several times for selling his company’s financial product. We remained clueless.

By then we decided to take the individual to the hospital. Reaching hospital, we briefed the emergency doctor about the accident. He quickly began his job and asked us to inform his relatives. Police too reached soon.

By the mean time the condition of the victim worsened. So the nurse at the emergency department called us to enquire about the relatives of the victim as she had to take a signature from them on a form meant to allow the hospital administration to put the victim on the ventilator. She also wanted them to purchase some life saving drugs, but not finding one she handed the prescription of the drugs to me to bring them as I was standing in the front.

Caught in a dilemma of spending or not spending money on an individual totally unknown, I hesitantly moved to the medical shop cursing fate. Worldly prescription echoed my ears: “Ghar sai paisa laga kar samajsewa nahi hoti”. But suddenly my thought saw light. It dawned on me that this money I am spending will come back some day or the other, but if this person dies what will happen to his family. First time in my life I spend some Rs 1000 for saving a person whom I don’t know. It brought me tears of joy.

After handling the medicines to the nurse there at emergency department, I then just thought of checking the phone of the person again. I suddenly thought of checking the SMS message inbox of the mobile of victim. After first few promotional sms’s, I located a sms which was send by a lady named as Neha. The message read “ I know I have no importance in your life. From now our ways are apart & will not call you again and will never pick up your call. “ It didn’t take me much time to understand that this lady is the girl friend of victim. So I thought of calling Neha thinking she can be the best source of knowing about the victim’s family. She doesn’t picked up the call. I tried several times but she didn’t responded. Then, I text her telling that this accident has happened and I need her help in reaching to victim’s kin. Within a minute I got a call from Neha enquiring about the accident . I briefed her about the situation and asked about victim’s family. She quickly responded and told us the name of the victim as Aman. Just in fraction of seconds, Aman’s phone again rang and this time a call came from a person recorded in mobile as Ashish BB. This person told me that he is the elder brother of Aman and had got a call from Neha about the accident. He asked me about the situation of Aman and informed that he is rushing to the hospital. Later, Ashish told me the meaning of BB – Big Brother.

After some time when situation of Aman started improving, Ashish came to me and thanked me for all the help and tried to return my 1000 bucks. But I didn’t take that money as by that time I had got hooked to Aman’s plight.

Finally Aman was saved but it took me to realize that we wasted more than one and half hours in searching for his nearest kin. And if it was not a Sunday (when I have no work to do) I would have spent nearly about two hours for a person even whom name I don’t know?
So episode of Aman gave us the thought of creating a self-help community which is bound by this program to help themselves in situation of emergency or sudden trauma in a public place. When I started searching for the idea in the internet, to my pleasant surprise I found that in Europe and in America, such initiative exists in the name of ICE – In Case of Emergency. ICE is a matter of spending just once 30 seconds of yours but its benefits will go through out your life. Add “ICE 1 Name” of your nearest kin in your contacts in the mobile phone and save your golden time in the case of any mishap or mishappening. Want to add more of your near and dear ones to save you when in emergency, save ICE-1, ICE-2 and so on. But, don’t blink further. Join the cause. Prompt your near ones too.