US group to honour those who ‘stick their neck out’

If you know someone who sticks his/her neck out to fight corruption, someone who is fighting business or government agencies to undo a wrong or prevent wrong from being done, here’s time to honour such heroes.

If you know someone who sticks his/her neck out to fight corruption, someone who is fighting business or government agencies to undo a wrong or prevent wrong from being done, here’s time to honour such heroes.

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‘Giraffe Heroes India’ — on the lines of Giraffe Heroes International, USA — promises to provide a platform to recognise such heroes who “stick their neck out”.

And there are enough people who not only work for the society at large but also take risks in doing that - the two main criteria for qualifying as a ‘Giraffe Hero’.

“It is all about finding people who act with great courage and conviction and telling their stories and honouring them to inspire others,” said John Graham, director of Giraffe Heroes International (GHI).

“When a story about ‘Giraffe’ is read, someone might think, ‘If he can do it, I can too’. This will help change people’s behaviour and also their perception about themselves in being responsible citizens,” he said.

Since its inception in the US 30 years ago, GHI has honoured about 800 people, including 11 from India, across the world. The ‘heroes’ are not chosen by application but necessarily nominated by someone else.

The Giraffe Heroes India would be an independent Indian programme and not an Indian chapter of the US programme. ‘The Giraffe Hero’ honour, however, has no cash component but just a citation. “What we instead do is to facilitate a feature documentary on the chosen people,” Graham said.

Vijay Saluja, himself a ‘Giraffe Hero’ since 2004, has been chosen as the director of Giraffe Heroes India programme.

“Our website would be launched in about two weeks’ time. The idea is to let people know about such gutsy people,” Saluja said.

He said, “With the awareness comes the team building to identify people and cross-check their credentials. Once the groundwork is over, we would formally launch it in November.”