Small efforts add up: an illustration from KK Nagar

Members of KK Nagar Friends Helping Group — largely residents of KK Nagar and surrounding areas — pass the hat around and mobilise funds whenever an act of mercy needs to be performed.

This is true of any group that has a sharply-etched mission and seeks to fulfill it with extravagant commitment. The group should be kept impervious to outside influences that could dilute the mission, and sufficiently ajar to let in those that can further its scope.

KK Nagar Friends Helping Group enrolled in this school of thought and seemed to have passed the tests with flying colours.

D. Sivakumar, founder and prime mover behind KK Nagar Friends Helping Group, notes only those that have a “helping hand” to show can be part of its WhatsApp group.

The prerequisite for membership is an effort in the past to have promoted an act of mercy.

Little wonder that its WhatsApp group is sparsely populated — 25 members, according to Sivakumar.

And the group has been in existence since the early part of the pandemic — in 2020 — formed essentially to address the problem of hunger.

“For one month, we provided lunch to 65 frontline workers, preparing the food ourselves,” says Sivakumar.