Community Development Project

On
Prescription for Change

Submitted by: Sodum Lavitha Reddy

Registration number: 12103667

In partial fulfillment for the requirements of the award of the degree

of
BBA honours

MITTAL SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

Lovely Professional University

Phagwara, Punjab.
 Certification by the NGO regarding the Student Project

This to certify that the Mr./Ms. Lavitha Reddy carried out the Project titled

Prescription for change in the supervision of K T Suresh in

our organization. It is further certified that he/she spent a minimum of 30 hours on the

Project and his/her contribution because of the Project undertaken has been

remarkable. .

(Authorized Signatory)
Introduction:
Spending time enriching your community is a great way to broaden your
perceptions of the world is what I believe in and this is what ENSYDE believes
in too. Environmental Synergies in Development (ENSYDE) is an organisation
with an aim to reduce the environmental footprint of organizations,
establishments and institutions in India. It designs and implements solutions that
improve resource use efficiency – specifically energy, water and waste. For
ENSYDE, the environment is and will always be the beneficiary.
ENSYDE was established in 2003 as a consultancy organization and registered
as a Trust in 2016 to continue its service towards conservation and betterment
of our environment. Environmental Synergies in Development (ENSYDE)
focuses on five broad areas – recycling, energy, water, waste and education. It
designs and implements solutions for environmental improvement, by
understanding citizen behaviour and encouraging action. ENSYDE strongly
believes in breaking barriers to environmental sustainability in the interface
areas of energy, water and waste.
The project that I have undertaken is “Prescription for Change”. It is concerned
with recycling and proper disposal of medicines.

Problem identification:
We have come across a lot of people who threw away a lot of unused
medicines, especially post covid, when every middle and high class household
has basic fever and cough medicines such as Dolo 650 and Chestandcold. Apart
from this, there are a lot of generic and disease specific medicines that get
wasted when either the prescription gets changed or the patient dies. A lot of
these medicines get unused and thrown away before or after their expiry, which
again, are not disposed properly, causing harm to the environment. On the other
hand, there is the lower class which is not able to buy even basic medicines and
this is an issue that is to be spoken about and resolved.

Cause of Problem identified:

The main reason for such a huge wastage of medicines is because the middle
and upper class buy more medicines than required which never get completely
utilised and have to be ultimately thrown after their expiry which is a sheer
wastage of money. Another reason can as mentioned earlier, a change in
prescription or decease of the patient, where again, a lot of medicines that are
specific to certain health conditions get wasted. The economic parity between
people is getting higher and higher day by day and the rich are getting richer
while the poor struggle to earn their daily bread. The lower class has been
incapable of buying things required for bare subsistence such as medicines and
this is the gap that I, being a part of ENSYDE, wish to bridge.

Objectives to be achieved:
• The most important objective of the organization was to spread awareness
about how people can make an impact by donating unused medicines.
This is the base objective as this would lead to donation of medicines
which will be distributed to the unprivileged which forms the second
objective.
• The core objective is to be able to help the lower class where people find
buying medicines unaffordable by giving them the donated medicines for
free of cost.
• This objective is a by-product of the first two objectives, that is, to lessen
the wastage caused by throwing away of useful medicines.
• The last objective is to carefully dispose expired medicines so as to
prevent non-environment friendly methods of its disposal which cause
harm to the environment.

Various steps taken to achieve the objectives:

The effort is to build awareness among people how one can be a responsible
citizen by giving back to the society in any way possible, and through
ENSYDE, one can donate unused and unexpired medicines to people to find it
difficult to afford them. There have been meetings organized in several housing
societies where volunteers from ENSYDE told them about the project
“prescription for change”. ENSYDE has tied up with Resident Welfare
Association (RWA), an NGO, that represents the interests of the residents of a
specific urban or suburban locality, particularly in Indian cities.

The organization has built two departments for the purpose of this very project;
one which organizes events in certain housing societies of Bangalore and
certain other places of Karnataka and other which collects unused and unwanted
medicines through door-to-door collection.
The first department, which is the one that organises events in the housing
societies in Bangalore is in tie up with another non profit organization called
RWA, which stands for resident welfare association. Through this association,
ENSYDE manages to get in contact with the presidents or incharges of various
housing societies so as to make the process of organizing awareness events
easier. After seeking permission for organizing the awareness programme, the
date and time is fixed. On that particular date, volunteers along with few of the
important personal like the founder or managing trustee reach the housing
society in which they will conduct the event and set up banners and collection
boxes. The event begins on the introduction of the organization, that is,
ENSYDE. They go on to cover the importance of the right utilization of
medicines and their proper disposal. We encourage people to buy only those
medicines that they actually need and only in that quantity they feel they
require. Stocking tablets is never a good option as they might go unused due to
uncertainty. This usually applies for people with chronic diseases where
medications are used for a very long time or even lifelong. The prescription
might get changed after regular visits to their respective doctors or in some
cases the untimely or sudden death of people might cause a lot of wastage of
their three to four months advance stock of medicines which ultimately either
go to trash or get forgotten in some untouched areas of the house. Such
medicines can be donated to the organization which would be further distributed
to those who are incapable of affording them. People were shown the location
of the collection box in their building. We asked people to contribute whatever
little they could (medicines only) through drop boxes present in certain places
of Bangalore.

The second group of this project, which I was a part of, had the duty of going to
those places which did not come under RWA approved societies and telling
them about our organization and collecting any unused medicines if they had
any. I worked for two weeks wherein I went to about ten different housing
societies to spread awareness about the mission of our organization and collect
medicines which they find no longer useful. Though most people had nothing to
offer, I still managed to collect about eighty strips of tablets and about 5 to 6
bottles of syrups and ointments. As a volunteer of ENSYDE, this was the
highest that a single person had collected during the project. I was appreciated
for my efforts as well.
At the end of every week, we would collect the medicines from all the
collection boxes and segregate them according to the expiry date firstly, and
then all the expired medicines were separated to be disposed off safely as per
one of their objectives. The useful medicines were then segregated on the basis
of their uses; cardivas and cidmus for heart patients, chestandcold for cough,
coldact for cold and like wise. The segregation is done by a qualified doctor
who himself is a volunteer at ENSYDE. These medicines are then distributed to
poor people after looking into their prescription.
Lastly, the expired medicines are disposed in an unharmful manner. It is an
initiative started to address the fast growing & harmful stream of waste – unused
& expired medication. With increasing use of medication due to current lifestyles
and environmental pollution, the proper management of the waste generated is of
prime importance. Currently a majority (>80%) of the citizens dispose their
expired & unused medication along with dry waste. This ends up in the landfill
along with other waste, resulting in soil, water and air contamination.Through
this initiative, we ensure that unused & expired medication is responsibly
segregated, collected and disposed. The initiative is being implemented in
Bengaluru, India, by two non-profit organisations – Environmental Synergies in
Development (ENSYDE) in partnership with Hasiru Dala Innovations.

Effectiveness of the project:

The project on and all was a huge success. The awareness that the organization
has spread through its events in various housing societies has lead to a lot of
contribution of unused and unexpired medicines and also expired medicines for
their disposal either through the collection boxes or through direct door to door
collection. The monthly collection exceeded 600 strips of tablets and 20 plus
bottles of liquid syrups and few brand new inhalers for pulmonary diseases like
asthama, CODP, influenza, tuberculosis, etc. Also the expired tablets disposal
took an efficient turn as the organization took the responsibility to discharge
those in a less harmful and more eco-friendly way by first segregating them
according to their composition and then disposing them accordingly. This helps
in non-contamination of our natural resources like land, soil or water of lakes
and rivers which would have not been possible through careless disposal of the
same. The tablets were successfully distributed amongst the needy people upon
seeing their prescription by a doctor who is a volunteer at ENSYDE.
Conclusion:
Until I worked here, an NGO merely meant a non-government organization for
me. But after having the honour of working here at ENSYDE, I learnt the
importance of NGOs in India and the impact they have on the unprivileged
sector. The outcome of this project is very noble. Every member of the
organization has worked to achieve the objective of the project, that is, to raise
awareness of the positive impact that unneeded pharmaceutical donations can
have, to be able to assist the lower class, where individuals find it difficult to
afford purchasing medicines, by providing them with the donated drugs at no
cost, to reduce the waste brought on by discarding effective medications and to
safely dispose the unused medicines keeping in mind the safety of our natural
resources to prevent their contamination. By the end of this project, I was able
to talk more confidently with people and also learnt what giving back to the
society means in a true sense. Working on this project gave me a sense on
content and satisfaction that was very different and something that I never felt
before and this has positively affected my personality and in future I will
certainly take up more of such activities.
EVIDENCE: