The joy of giving
Saaisha’s Support To Cancer Survivors
Naavya Lodh & Nurina Amin, AIS Pushp Vihar, X C
Losing an organ is indubitably life-altering; losing a breast or both, in the case of women, is an unfortunate occurrence. For mastectomy, has the potential to not only alter one’s sense of femininity and beauty, but also take away from one’s self-confidence. Howbeit, ‘alone we can do so little, together we can do so much’ is what Saaisha India Foundation, an altruistic organisation working towards providing free crocheted breast prosthesis to cancer survivors, counts on when it comes to empowering the suffering lot. Here’s what its founder, Jayashree Ratan, and director of outreach, Srividya Gopinath, have to say about this community built on love.
The inspiration
The seeds for Saaisha were sown when
Jayashree Ratan met a relative who had undergone mastectomy. “When I found out that the lady was using cloth to create a prosthesis, I suddenly got reminded of reading about crocheted/knitted breast prosthesis, dubbed Knockers, somewhere. Though successful, these were only distributed by an organisation in USA then. Being adept at crochet, I decided to give the lady one made by me. Her grateful response is what led to the formation of Saaisha India Foundation, as you know it today, in Mumbai in 2018.”
The journey
Having already distributed around 15,392 knockers since then, Saaisha has truly come a long way. “We started off as a small group of five or six women and today we have a volunteer base of more than 375 women. We further plan to take our volunteer count to 1000 at least,” stated Ratan about their knitting journey thus far. Saaisha India has two centres of collection, one in Chennai and the other one in Mumbai, where the volunteers can submit their crocheted knockers whenever they want for further quality check and processing. The foundation also introduced making of beanies (cotton caps) about four years back, which are given to children affected with chemotherapy. Those in need can claim their products free of cost through the foundation’s social media handles, their website, email, or even WhatsApp.
The fuel
At Saaisha, there are women who are beneficiaries turned volunteers, and many who did not even know how to crochet at the onset. Suruchi, a volunteer, shares her experience, “As volunteers, we buy the yarn, weave the product, and then courier the finished product to the collection point, where another set of volunteers fill them with fibre, sew them up, tag them, sort them into various sizes, and then post them to the end users. Anyone who wants to do the same, can contact Saaisha at the numbers/email address given on their website.” To build communal relationships, events like Crocheting Public Day and Knitting Public Day, are also being organised by the foundation.
The fire
In the beginning, their products were known through word-of mouth only, and so their kind efforts couldn’t reach to all those suffering “During the pandemic, we went online to further this cause,” added Gopinath. It increased the demand, but certainly not the foundation’s ability to keep up to it. “We do tell the volunteers to give us 40 knockers every year, they certainly cannot be forced. Besides, sourcing the right type of cotton yarn is tough. We use 100% mercerised cotton and procuring it in India gets hard at times. Acquiring virgin poly fibre that the knockers are filled with is an onerous task, too. Not to mention the funding bit; Reliance is kind enough to give us the virgin fibre free of cost, we are still looking for sources for the funding of yarn,” Ratan tacked on.