Helping them realize their right to live

It all started with youngster Shashi Kiran suffering from stage V chronic kidney ailment. He approached the Kote Foundation, a non-profit organization combating global poverty, for a financial donation for his kidney replacement.
Raghurama Kote, founder of Kote Foundation, and employees of an IT firm where he was a senior official, raised Rs 3 lakh for Shashi’s treatment as part of the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR).
Kiran’s case set Kote thinking. Realizing that there is no real platform for many people who would want to contribute for the expensive treatment of those who cannot afford it, Kote started the ‘Right to Live’. It is a platform to facilitate people willing to donate for costly medical intervention of the underprivileged and lesser privileged.
“It was easy to realize that people who wanted to contribute generously were frustrated by the absence of a transparent platform, either private or government,” says Kote.
Right to Live brings the less privileged face to face with the donors, hospitals, doctors, government, charitable organizations as well as corporations. The biggest advantage is perhaps the fact that donors can rest in peace that they are indeed contributing to a genuine cause.
KOTE FOUNDATION Kote Foundation that adopts an entrepreneurial approach to address the problems of global poverty, focuses on delivering affordable, critical goods and services like health, education and shelter through an innovative approach. A Kote Foundation initiative, Right to Live operations are managed by the former.
FROM CHAIRMAN’S DESK Chairman and volunteer Raghurama Kote is passionate about providing basic needs of health, education and shelter to the underprivileged lot. An engineer by qualification, Kote completed a ‘Leading professional services firm’ course from Harvard Business School before joining the IT sector.
THE PROCESS Kote says the process of recommendation is transparent. ‘‘We take in patients who come to us via known NGOs. Often some doctors refer cases to us and we follow it up with a field survey by one of our programme co-ordinators — this is to assess the genuineness of the case,” he says.
Right to Live is supported by ‘Doctors for Seva’, and has tie-ups with hospitals. They assist patients in getting surgeries done at minimal cost, where doctors’ fees and the hospital charges are often subsidized, if not totally waived. Only the equipment (pacemaker etc) cost has to be borne.