Why all techies should give back

Just a few weeks ago, I had a pleasure of flying to India to visit family after 10 years. A good amount of my time, I ended up helping out a non-profit organization, Naturecure Vadodara (naturecure.co) in their efforts to promote a healthy living for everyone. I invested my time and energy here because I know what we learn in our everyday lives as an Entrepreneur, Techie, or any other Expert field is always facilitated in part by people who want to share their expertise and as a result, it becomes your responsibility to do the same. Please do so whenever you can!

A Techie is anyone who is an expert in or enthusiastic about technology in general. This does not have to be computing, it can be anything technology wise such as Aviation, Healthcare, IoT, etc. Also, in this context giving back does not necessarily only mean giving money, it can also mean giving time and energy. Being a Techie myself, I had a pleasure to share my expertise in website building to help marketing efforts for Naturecure Vadodara.

Naturecure, Vadodara has evolved a unique drugless treatment regimen, by bringing together, the two most powerful curative tools of ancient India, Naturopathy & Yoga.

A little about Naturecure Vadodara, their mission is two fold, firstly they have a naturecure hospital in the center of the city to promote a healthy living for everyone, and secondly they also have their own naturopathy institute to inspire future generations. They are driven by the notion that human body can always heal itself.

Human Body is a Self Healing Machine

For a mission this noble, it is imperative that they can be helped in anyway possible for their mission. Being non-tech and non-profit We cannot expect them to spend a fortune on Marketing, Website, etc. However, they can be helped out with those aspects by experts like us (techies). I helped them out in completely rebuilding their website to help their marketing efforts. They already have clients who travel from countries like United States and France specially to get treatment there. This is part of the reason, why their website (naturecure.co) needs to tell a clear story about their mission and needs to have a modern eye-appealing look to attract new clients. Below are the screenshots of how the website was before (top) and how the website is now (bottom).

As you may notice, the old website had a very confusing layout, was hard to navigate, and had a lot longer loading time. On the other hand, the new website now has a single page type simple layout, it now tells a story starting off with a very powerful message and since it’s a single page template, the loading time is significantly lower which is required for countries like India where access to High speed internet is still considered a luxury.

Additionally, I was also able to add a lot of automation to the website. Here’s the list of changes that were made:

• Changing Admission forms: Previously, they had to send an email to the webmaster, now all they have to do is make changes to a google doc and it is automatically converted to PDF and served on the website.
• Changing Prices: Similar process as above, previously, they had to send an email with the prices list to the website, now all they have to do is make changes to a google doc and similarly as above, it is automatically converted to PDF and served on the website.
• Changing Image Gallery: Previously, they had to email the photos to the webmaster, now the image gallery of the website is connected to a flickr album, so all they have to do is make changes to that flickr album including image title and description and it automatically gets reflected in their website gallery.
• Adding News Announcements: Similar process as above, previously, they had to send the text they needed presented to the webmaster, now the blog section of the website is connected to their twitter account, so similar to the above process, all they have to do is tweet using their twitter account and it is automatically reflected in their website blog.

As you see, drastic changes were made to the website which will assist greatly in their Marketing efforts, which in turn will assist Naturecure Vadodara in their mission to promote a healthy lifestyle for everyone. That being said, let me reiterate the point I made at the beginning, If you are an expert at something, it becomes your responsibility to help people who are not an expert at it, Please please do so. Efforts like this will help make the world a better place, slowly but surely.

Any questions/comments/concerns, please feel free to comment.

Disclaimer: I am not formally affiliated with BMNaturecure other that this volunteer activity. I was not asked by anyone from BMNaturecure to write this blogpost. BMNaturecure did not reach out to me to assist in their website, I reached out to them. I did not charge BMNaturecure a single penny for the transformation.