By Sekhar Seshan. Consulting Editor, Business India

In India, volunteers working for Persistent Foundation have found, poor awareness and superstitions have transformed a curable condition like facial cleft lip and palate into a stigma. The Foundation, set up by the Pune-headquartered Persistent Systems in 2009 to formalise its CSR activities that it had begun 14 years earlier, works in three thrust areas, education, health and community development.

A complete cure for cleft lip demands a series of surgeries, along with treatments like speech therapy for a continued period of time, as Yogita Apte, project manager – CSR, explains. The Foundation has joined hands with expert organisations to create awareness about facial clefts by reaching out to schools and anganwadis in rural areas to offer this support to children from economically challenged backgrounds.

With the aim of breathing new life into healthcare for both young and old people, Persistent has concentrated on healthcare for children, women and senior citizens as a key focus. It implements its programmes for them in partnership with hospitals and NGOs who share its objectives. In the past two decades, these programmes have helped over 10,000 people.

Paediatric surgeries – which include operations for foot correction, urological, orthopaedic, cleft lip and palate – are one of the prime areas of support, improving the patient’s way of living drastically. The broader methodology, encompassing both curative as well as preventive initiatives, has evolved the Foundation’s approach into a more holistic one. “Our health initiatives have benefited more than 160,000 lives through 27-plus unique projects,” Apte says.