Donor Connect: Our fortnightly updates to donors
Dear Donors - In case you have missed any of our mailers, you could check this page and catch up. And if you are someone who has stumbled upon this page for the first time, we invite you to join us in our journey. Give us a donation to sustain our work. Contribute your time/ expertise. Connect us with people who matter - in the National Medical Commission / ICMR or any of the Councils. Help us reach medical / nursing / dental / pharmacy and other colleges. In short - Become a part of the history we are creating! We welcome you!
May 19, 2025: Our Founder gives a talk about Library and Information Sciences as a Career
A couple of weeks back I was invited by a friend Dr Shubhada Nagarkar to participate in an event she planned for and deliver a short talk. Dr Shubhada is a Prof of Library and Information Sciences in the Savitribai Phule University, Pune. She planned this event to attract more students to the profession and so the talk was for Undergrad students of any discipline.
The event was online and held on May 15. There were around 37 participants. There were five speakers
Dr Mehtab Alam is the Head of an LIS department of AMU. He talked about the profession and about his own career in both corporate and academic domains. He stressed that opportunities were plenty.
I was the second speaker. After sharing a bit about my career story, I stressed that as a Social entrepreneur I was giving back a lot to society, by way of creating better doctors (and health professionals) with vital search skills. And shared examples of how I had helped doctors with information that they used, to approach treatment and in fact even save a life.
The third was Mr Anant Sabane, a librarian who specialized in Technical Writing. The fourth was a young lady Ms. Shraddha Panage who is with MasterCard. The fifth and youngest person was Ms Tanmayee Joglekar, who works for Think Analytics.
It was wonderful listening to all. I must admit – especially to the youngest two (who also happened to be Dr. Shubadha’s students – she was rightfully very proud of them). They highlighted what is very important today. You may work in a library or another domain – but the skills of Information Sciences play a great role in several domains!
This is an important message for both future employers and of course for students considering Library and Information Sciences as a career.
Feedback from the students was good too – with many indicating that they would consider a career in this field. Some gave useful suggestions for more such sessions. I am happy that Dr Shubada is planning for more, and I have told her that I would be happy to help in this initiative!
Apr 30, 2025: New Year, New Energy: Goals, Growth & Giving Back!
Another new financial year begins and we have already completed a month. This year we started off on a great note. We created a set of goals for the year 2025-26. Then, using the power of mind maps and some productivity techniques that I learnt from my mentor recently, we worked further. We split the goals month wise. We also worked out methods on tracking what we accomplished. We found that we had done pretty well for April! That felt really good and we are charged to do more next month!
In April an important development was figuring out how we could use volunteers. For years, when we did try, we had not been too successful. This year, we stumbled upon www.wedogood.in – we heard their Founder speak in a webinar and then later connected with them. They are an organization that understands what an NGO needs, connects them to people from their volunteer pool and then helps the NGO to complete a specific project with the volunteer’s help. We have signed up for one and are eager to move ahead!
Earlier this year, we had a small experiment with two interns from the NMIMS – a well known institution in Mumbai. It was great knowing that their students of the BBA degree had to compulsorily intern with NGOs in their first year. We got two very enthusiastic students – Ananya and Mittal who put in 60 hours with us and then are continuing with us on their own accord for a slightly longer time. It is a learning experience for us too – and we hope we make some strides in great engagement of volunteers.
Apr 16, 2025: QMed’s impact. A young doctor wishes to help his institution’s library
I am delighted to share this month’s “DonorCONNECT” story – one that touches our hearts.
There are some days when we have unexpected calls / emails / visitors. A recent event was when a young doctor we knew, wrote to us after quite some time. He had attended our PubMed workshop a few years ago. He later enrolled in www.qmedcourses.in for advanced learning. For both events he gave us excellent feedback and had kept in touch with us off and on.
When he called, he shared with me about having joined his Alma Mater as a resident a few years ago – wanting to express gratitude to the institution. That sounded so good!
It felt even nicer when I heard that he now wishes to help their library in whatever way he can. He had got inspired by our work at QMed (and the fact that librarians were behind it). One important concern he shared was he felt that their institution’s librarian had put in lots of efforts but was unable to attract a foot fall to the library.
We fixed time to discuss this in some more detail and during the call, I shared some conceptual points like
- We have to see what best to do with short attention spans of people for any reading.
- Identify book lovers, get them together and brainstorm.
- See how the library can reach out to many users. He loved it when I said – “The library should go to the reader”. Footfalls are not just about people coming into the library – but about using library resources.
- How can the library be made into a “welcoming space”.
We worked out some ideas like:
- Start by involving a few students and faculty who love to read.
- Identify some unusual books and plan to highlight specific areas – maybe by making cards with these thoughts.
- Have book discussion clubs.
- Have journal clubs.
- Inspired by our old colleague who had done this earlier – Have events where participants are given questions. and asked to “find the answers from the best resources”. He loved this innovative idea.
- Have research discussions.
- Have short “learn how to” sessions.
He was very happy with these ideas and said he would work on them.
This is just the beginning – I hope to hear from him in a few months. Even if one activity takes off – that is a beginning!
It is indeed wonderful when a workshop participant of a decade ago comes back! We at QMed feel so good.
This quarter – Mid Apr to Mid- July we wish to raise Rs 2,00,000 for revamping our website and for various renewals we need to pay – video editing software, video hosting, website hosting and more. You could even give monthly recurring donations if that is easier for you. When you give, you join us in our mission towards developing a healthier society!
Mar 31, 2025: QMed completes utilization of its first Grant
March has been a busy month with two workshops and three lectures. We finished the last two workshops with the first ever grant money we received from Pfizer in 2023. These two were at the Tata Memorial Hospital and the Seth GSMC & KEM Hospital. A slightly disappointing part was that at both venues, while about 35 registered, we had far less that actually attended. In medical institutions sometimes other emergencies make this happen and it was sad that it happened in both these institutions.
Of course those who came, made it up with 100% enthusiastic participation and encouraged others who missed, to learn from our ELearning courses.
We also had two lectures at the YMT Ayurvedic college and one webinar for the ML Dhawale Memorial Homeopathic College. I must confess that I miss the interactions that happen in live events, when I speak over a webinar session. But for institutions, it is sometimes more effective to plan for webinars rather than live events.
We are at the end of another Financial year of not having made ends meet. But we strive on! And keep hoping that people WILL support us financially to take things ahead. Importantly the bodies like the NMC, the DCI and more will make our courses mandatory. Then with every institution subscribing, we will have the finances to put in much more than we are able to now and make a huge change in the country!