Name: Ms. Beulah Savitha
Company & Job Title: Founder & CEO of “Everyside Foundation”
Every soul in the world longs for a sense of meaning in this world, which often translates into a search for a life purpose. This search gets ignited by the fire of passion and a thirst for success. Initially, we believe our life purpose to be something which satisfies our materialistic desires, focusing on what our minds want. However, with experience, we come to realize that a truly fulfilling life purpose is established around a selfless goal and serves something greater than ourselves, an experience that our hearts want. While some people realize this early in their life, many undergo numerous obstacles and transformations to understand it very much later on.
Ms. Beulah Savitha considers herself blessed, as she found her life purpose sooner than most. With ambitions of becoming a social entrepreneur from her school days at KVCLRI, Adyar, Chennai, she pursued higher studies in the field of management at MCC College, Tambaram to understand the nuances of the entrepreneurial world.
She later completed her MBA degree successfully at SRM University, Kattankulathur. To learn the art of administration, and to obtain valuable experience in the corporate world, she worked as an HR in Covenant Consultant, performing her role with utmost dedication for a couple of months as a trainee. Equipped with corporate experience, and her passion to serve the community, she embarked on her entrepreneurial journey by becoming a founding member of Wisdom Ms, a social organization which offers affordable skill-building classes for children and women. She also established her own venture called Kneading bowl, which conducts baking classes for women and children.
While she successfully achieved her entrepreneurial dreams, in her heart, she sensed that something was still missing from her life. The spark for this feeling originated during her days at Wisdom MS. One afternoon, while travelling for work, she encountered a weak and elderly man, probably in his 80s, struggling to pedal an old bicycle carrying his granddaughter. Among the countless number of people travelling in bikes and luxury cars, his poverty, struggle and the love for his granddaughter stood out like a burning star. This incident left a profound impact in her heart. The event kept flashing in her mind during her sleep that day and filled her eyes with tears. She wondered why she was crying for a stranger completely unrelated to her.
She began to notice many such heartbreaking incidents in her life journey, caused as a result of poverty and marginalization. These incidents made her reflect deeply and feel a powerful spiritual force of empathy, motivating her to serve the community in impactful ways, and aligning her passion with a greater life purpose.
Her experience in Wisdom MS and Kneading bowl helped her realize the impact education can have in supporting the growth, development and welfare of children and women. Through her experience, she observed that many children and women from uneducated, impoverished, and marginalized communities were not able to afford the same quality of education as affordable by middle-class and rich societies. While many people benefitted through her entrepreneurial ventures and appreciated her work, she felt that it still was not able to reach the grass root levels of society, and this sowed the seed for a new idea of revolution in her mind.
Having fixed her life purpose as uplifting the poor and downtrodden communities, Savitha founded Every Side Foundation in 2020, an NGO with education as its cornerstone. It was established with the aim to improve the quality of education and awareness among underprivileged children and women. With fundamental human values such as love, compassion, and selfless service as its roots, the foundation began to serve unprivileged children and women in and around Chennai. Through scholarships, mentor programs, awareness campaigns, and providing access to quality educational resources, the foundation did a wonderful job in making a long-lasting impact in the lives of many children and women from poor and uneducated backgrounds.
Her journey was not an easy one and was fraught with challenges. Being a young woman and belonging to a conservative society, where women are expected to get married at the earliest and sacrifice their personal dreams and aspirations to take care of the family, it was indeed a mountain to climb for her. Apart from facing questioning of her decisions by society, she encountered other significant hurdles such as overcoming burnouts due to her busy schedule and resolving safety issues arising in rural and disconnected locations. Despite facing such personal challenges, she overcame the hardships by focusing solely on the joy of creating an impact in society, the gratitude she received from numerous beneficiaries, and her unwavering faith in God.
The foundation faced challenges of its own, such as collecting funds in a timely manner, complying with government regulations, mobilizing volunteers, and so on. Notwithstanding such challenges, the foundation grew stronger each year under her leadership. With valuable experience by her side, she recognized the need to address other basic necessities, such as nutrition, healthcare, and livelihood support, alongside education. The organization expanded its services to up lift society’s suffering due to the lack of those basic needs, by creating new campaigns focused on providing nutritious food, conduction of health camps, providing support for medical treatment, conducting skill development programs, supporting the homeless, and so on.
Volunteers played a crucial role in the growth of the organization, offering a helping hand both offline and online. Her faith in God also helps her immensely in overcoming the challenges faced by the foundation. God has a plan for each person’s career, providing opportunities to use our skills for good. These opportunities, often not obvious, can involve mundane tasks or challenging projects. However, by working with a spirit of service and excellence, we can make a positive impact and honor God. Each person has a purpose, and our careers are part of it. Using our skills for good work, we can positively impact colleagues and communities, glorifying God.
Under the capable leadership of Ms. Beulah Savitha, Everyside Foundation tirelessly works to make a positive impact on society, with the founder focusing on the larger picture, such as equal education, equal respect, upholding women’s rights, and elimination of poverty from the country. This is the story of a remarkable woman who began her journey as an HR professional, followed by pursuing her passion through her entrepreneurial ventures, ultimately aligning her passion with a grand purpose by establishing Everyside Foundation, and dedicating her time and skills to serve society. In a world where materialistic pursuits take importance over altruistic service, and women are not encouraged to be independent and ambitious, this story stands as a beacon of inspiration for many and proves that a kind and compassionate heart can overcome any obstacles that stand along the way of reaching meaningful goals.
