Reaching out to the world to learn and share

Concern Without Borders is an initiative that grew out of the experience of the Pain and Palliative Care Society in leveraging volunteers to create huge social impact in healthcare.

What started in 1993 as a pain clinic in a small room in Kozhikode Medical College in Kerala, has now grown into a mass movement with almost 30,000 volunteers trained and skilled in caring for the terminally ill. Care given through this network of volunteers was recently termed by Economist Intelligence Unit as a 'beacon of hope' for the world. Around 300 such self-sustaining palliative centres are functional today in the state of Kerala, accounting for nearly two-third of such centres in the whole of India. The Society now aims of expanding its reach and the network of volunteers to replicate this model in others parts of India and the world, and strengthen its existing operations.

Concern Without Borders is an attempt to learn from this unique experience and apply it for programmes beyond palliative care. We believe that the real empowerment of people at the grass-root level can be the catalyst that can bring huge social change. We also believe that there are many out there who have it in them to contribute to build and nurture such volunteering networks across the world, and demonstrate Concern without Borders.

This blog and other social media network we will be using hereafter is our attempt to reach out to the world and share what we have been doing in the last fifteen years and to learn from similar initiative from around the world.