Magic in action
Bidisha Fouzdar, Head of Communications, Magic Bus India Foundation, writes about how the organization’s work has gained widespread appreciation and support after being featured on Satyamev Jayate
On October 5, 2014, Magic Bus India Foundation was featured on Satyamev Jayate in the launch episode of Season 3, which was on the power of sports for development. A deluge of popular response hit us the moment the words ‘Magic Bus’ appeared on the screen. More than 12,000 people tried to check us out online around the same minute on www.magicbus.org, resulting in a website crash! Over the next weeks, we received more than 77,000 calls on the number flashed on screen, many of the callers wanted to initiate Magic Bus programmes in the areas they live in. Hundreds of others emailed or left messages on our social media channels, and that of the Satyamev Jayate site, asking to be associated with us in some way.
But the most touching among these were some messages from parents. “My child is a bit slow. I am hopeful that with engagement in sports he will pick up his studies better and grow up well,” wrote a parent from Mumbai. What Satyamev Jayate taught us was also the huge scale of the problem: we work with nearly half a million children, but compared to the 400 million, that is, the total child population of this vast country, we are touching just a fraction.
Our life after the programme is now about how to help these people. We believe if people will know more about our work, they will come forward to support us more. And Satyamev Jayate did just that—it created large-scale nationwide awareness about the fact that our approach is credible, and it gets results.
Thank you so much for featuring our work!