Hands 4 Zero Poverty (H4ZP) is returning to the slums of India to continue helping communities living in extreme poverty. To make our next project fun, we’ve created a campaign called #Ithankyou4 to share lessons learned during our previous community campaigns. As we deliver your support to the slums, we see the residents’ immense gratitude and appreciation for providing the education and medical help they desperately need – thanks to your donations. 

#Ithankyou4 campaign was created as a way to spread the appreciation the slums has demonstrated to all of us who have supported them in the past several years. To better explain the details of the #Ithankyou4 campaign, we’ve answered the top common questions addressed to us (please see below). We hope this information encourages you to help people – by either supporting us, other organizations, or better yet, by becoming a volunteer on the ground. We’re excited to share the photos and videos we’ll take during this next campaign. We’re especially eager to soon share their stories and our experiences. As always, give us a shout if you have questions at info@h4zp.org. 

How does #Ithankyou4 work? 
Simply use the #Ithankyou4 hashtag on social media sites to thank someone who is special or has done something for you and challenge them to do the same. Have fun as you do it, by letting others know they are remembered and, more importantly, appreciated. Use the hashtag freely – no donations or acknowledgement is required. Again, it is a hashtag created for you to pass along and share our message from the slums.  

Here is an example, I Billy had a swimming coach when I was a child named Luis Roballo. He taught me to be strong in life and to always reach as high as I can. Luis Roballo past away, I never had the chance to thank him for the great lessons he taught me. #Ithankyou Luis Roballo for teaching me to be strong not matter how bad the situation can or will be. Like he always said, lift up your chin and move forward; there is no time for pain. 

How will the #Ithankyou4 campaign help the slums? 
With #Ithankyou4 campaign, we hope people will become interested in learning and supporting slums, either through us or by any other means. As people learn about the slums, we are optimistic that they will feel the same love or compassion about these people as we did on our very first project. It was a project that essentially had no budget, support or equipment, but we had big hearts and a desire to help and make a difference for others.  

How do you plan to use the donations gathered with this campaign?
Our mission is to provide people with the means or tools to beat poverty. We believe we can fulfill our mission by providing: health, education, and empowerment. These are the main pillars of our mission to build our fortress against poverty. All our projects focus on building one or more of these three pillars. With the donations gather through the #Ithankyou4 campaign, we plan to provide:

• Food (nutrition) to the slums

• Medication checks and treatment (as required)

• Educational support

Our next H4ZP campaign will focus on two of these poverty pillars: health and education. We also are planning a project that empowers children in the slums; however, the details are still a surprise. We will give more details as we get closer to the project execution day. To give you a hint, it involves developing the children’s creativity through art. Stay tuned!

What is your plan to bring food supplies to the slums of India? 
To maximize the impact and available budget, we generally distribute rice, lentils, and flour. Our goal has always been to provide enough food supplies per family to last at least three weeks. The number of families we can support is based on the budget available, which is established by the donations received. So far, our donors have been very generous. In fact, we have never served less than 75 families with supplies less than three weeks. Of course, we hope to support even more families with your help.  

What is your plan to meet the goal of medical checks and treatment?
There are two ways to meet this goal. One method is to hire a local doctor(s) and nurse(s) (as required) for a few hours and transport them to the slums, where H4ZP sets up a tent and opens the doors to the public. Anyone who comes in and needs medical attention gets checked at no cost. The second method is renting a room near the slums and informing residents about the event, where doctor(s) and nurse(s) will be available to treat their medical conditions, again, at no cost. 

Note: Our medical campaigns not only bring medical professionals to the slums, but we also provide the crucial medical supplies required to treat basic illnesses. After the event, Hands 4 Zero Poverty provides the funding for those needing additional treatment as our budget permits. Our impact and success are totally dependent on the support provided by our donors. We encourage you to visit our medical campaign project page where you can learn and view the medial campaigns we have done in the past.

What is your plan to meet the goal of providing educational support? 
Educational support has always been one of our favorite projects. We truly believe that education is the most important tool to pull people out of poverty. During the #Ithankyou4 campaign, we plan to provide one-year scholarships to a few children in the slums who demonstrate interest and ability to commit to acquiring an education. This means that both the children and their families must value education and have the ability to transport the child to the school on a daily basis for at least a year. Because so many slum families need their children to work for the family’s survival, finding this type commitment is one of the hardest things we have encountered. We encourage you to visit our project page to learn our previous projects. There you can view some of the projects we have accomplished in support of education.

Are you a registered nonprofit?
Yes, Hands 4 Zero Poverty is a nonprofit registered in the state of Washington in the United States.

Is Hands 4 Zero Poverty a 501(c)(3) organization?
This is one of the questions we get the most. Simply stated, we do not have 501(c)(3) status because we have no budget. We are a very small organization; therefore, we cannot afford it, and we don’t want to use donations to fund our 501(c)(3) status. We are confident that our hard work and dedication will soon give us the ability to obtain 501(c)(3) status.

We hope by answering these common questions that we have inspired you to help build a fortress against poverty. You can donate to our efforts to support slum communities or get involved in other ways. If we have encouraged you to help someone by reading our story – through your donation or volunteering – that will be another brick we will add, with pride, to our fortress. 

 Thank you from everyone at Hands 4 Zero Poverty for allowing us to be the hands that deliver your support to the people of the slums and to be the voice that informs and encourages you to get involved. 

We are always here to listen to your feedback, questions, or stories you want to share. Reach out to us at info@h4zp.org.