Sohum Phadke 16:44
Well, I’ve never had the experience of telling someone they can’t do something. So that’s kind of been a struggle, like, Hey, you haven’t been working hard enough? Can we kind of help you work faster? A little bit? Right? So to me was never a thing from school group projects that you just don’t say that. But now that we have a deadline, we really needed to get people, you know, like moving forward a little bit. Yeah, managing like such a huge, like, support design community, it’s like hard to can navigate through what somebody wants versus what you can provide them. Right. So that’s something I definitely learned from my experiences chapter leader. And get we definitely had a continue.
Greg Owens 17:30
Well, I just wanted to make sure I get some context of like, in the beginning, you’re trying to get like 10 masks per person made a week, right? And you had just a few people, I would assume, right? And then you started to get more and more and more people. And then it started to become like some were able to produce even more masks.
Nitya Devisetti 17:50
Yeah, there were some very dedicated volunteers making 402 weeks, or 302 weeks, I just used to go and pick up this huge bag of masks and look at it and be so excited. And they drop it off in front of my house. And I just opened the door and would look outside and call my mom and say look how good they are. Um, but yeah.
Greg Owens 18:15
And throughout the whole organization, at this moment in time in October, how many masks are being generated a week about?
Nitya Devisetti 18:24
I honestly have not calculated because it would just be so much we have so many volunteers. We just don’t keep track of like how many masks they’re making per week, because some do use their own materials. Some just like pick them up whenever is convenient. And they just dropped them off. We try to minimize social interactions, just because of our county being in kind of the orange. I mean, they upgraded to the orange zone, but we’re still trying to save
Greg Owens 18:51
Yeah, yeah, but do you have any idea of how many are being produced in total right now? Like about?
Nitya Devisetti 19:00
I’d say like 200 per week. Okay. Yeah. 200 per week?
Nikhil Pasumarthi 19:07
That seems reasonable.
Greg Owens 19:08
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That’s great. So go ahead Nikhil.
Nikhil Pasumarthi 19:13
Yeah, so going off with so I’m sad about like, new experiences that we had as leaders of like a community of students who are our age. So we’ve definitely had some troubles. I’m wondering what age are you guys? Oh, um, we’re 15 to 17 or 18.
Greg Owens 19:29
Okay, just making sure I get that out there too.
Nikhil Pasumarthi 19:33
So it’s definitely been a new experience, because there’s some volunteers who might not follow up or have some like specific things that they need help with. And we have to like work together as a team like s3 and also other people. We had to work together as a team to figure out how to like, minimize these occurrences because we’ve never really like had to, like lead such a big group with so many volunteers with so many different like states and where they are at in their life. So it’s just been really, um, like a good learning experience to like, like, help like to minimize all these, like miscommunications and everything.
Greg Owens 20:12
Yeah, absolutely. And when you’re, I, I am volunteer and some nonprofits, and when you’re on a nonprofit, it’s much different. I own my own company. So I’m CEO, but it’s a, it’s a lot easier for me to get things done being the owner of a company, because I pay you, right? I pay people, right. And so then there’s an expectation there. And then if they, you know, they don’t do their job, I can say, like, Hey, I’m not going to stop paying you. Right. But when you have volunteers, there’s no money exchanged. You’re really just trying to get people motivated, and to help out and yours. And you guys are, like you said, you’re trying to meet some deadlines. And it’s so much more difficult, in a lot of ways, because people have their day jobs and their lives and they get busy. And, you know, and they might drop the ball, what kinds of systems have you put in place to help sort of motivate or keep people enthused in this process? Because it’s a lot. That’s a lot you guys are juggling and quite a few different human beings around?
Nitya Devisetti 21:12
Yeah. So to begin with, when I first reached out to all the people that signed up to make masks and cards, I also threw my phone number in there, so they could text me or email me whichever worked best. And I always the best thing that even though text and email is like confusing for people, I want to make it more convenient for them. Because that’s like the first way they can communicate with me. So I want to make communication first of all easy for them. And then I’m always made sure to make my personality show through. So like exclamation marks, because that can be hard over text. But obviously, we’re limited during COVID. So emojis, all those good things. Um, and we also have a Google Drive System with email templates, for all sorts of situations, if you’re contacting a principal, if you’re contacting the business for partnerships, or if you’re contacting, um,
Greg Owens 22:04
see if I’m systematizing as you’ve been going, right? So you’re writing, you’re writing some emails, and you’re putting in templates. And then you’re when you have somebody that is passionate like you are, you’re then saying, here’s, here’s all the resources we’ve gathered. That’s Yeah, absolutely. That’s amazing. That’s wonderful to be able to do. Yes, yeah.
Nitya Devisetti 22:24
I’m also adding on to the learning experience. I’ve definitely, as Nikhil said, learn to work with different types of people on in the sense that I had to be a leader, but I also had to be like, subservient. And like, kind of just accept them as a volunteer and be like, okay, yes, I’ll do what you need. But we also need to work together to get this done.
Yeah. And
I also learned to have like, be like, honest, integ have good integrity, and just like be transparent, because as a role model, like, I can give you a funny example, I was just walking to the park, and a lady, she was washing her car. And then she saw me I was wearing my mask. She like locked eyes with me. And she was like, Nitya, and I was like, Hi. And she was like masking a difference. And she like sat me down on her bench outside, I’d sat on her porch, and she was asking you all these questions, like, I’m so interested in volunteering, oh, my God, how did you start this? And just so some random person on the street recognized me, just through my eyes. And she was like, Oh, my God, don’t do you feel like a celebrity? So like, yeah, it was super funny. But basically, like, that showed me like, I have to be a role model, you know, because all these people that I don’t even know. No, like, recognize me on the street and like, see what I’m doing. So yeah, I have to take care of my actions. And because like anything can have consequences. So yeah,
Greg Owens 23:54
that’s such a great lesson to learn. Yeah, yeah. And anything else on the learning front, I mean, I’m there must there’s probably more, but if it doesn’t come to mind, we can go into other questions.
Nitya Devisetti 24:07
Um, the only thing I can think of at the moment is like handling social media. So when our posts, or like, the way we communicate with people is 100% transparent, we want to make sure they know where their time and where their efforts where the people who donate money, where everything is going, because as a nonprofit that could get we’re not an established 501c3. So, um, that makes things more complicated because people want to know exactly where they’re donating to. So as 17 as a 17 year old, like handling finances, handling communications with people and businesses that like have power with money. So that was definitely something that I had to be like very responsible, hold myself accountable. Make sure I was organized, things like that.
Sohum Phadke 25:00
We’re gonna add that we only have a set amount of funds. So we can’t, you know, go over the budget or anything like that. So although we want to make 10,000 masks, we can only make 500. Right? Because we don’t have the funds at the moment. So right, yeah, something I learned as well. And I think we all learned,
Greg Owens 25:18
like, you’re just having to budget you want to do you want to do so much more, but there’s only so much resources at the moment. And yeah, exactly. And tell me like, in the beginning, the design of the masks and and how have they changed over time.
Nitya Devisetti 25:34
Um, so what we, the design of the mask follows CDC guidelines. So that 10 inch by six inch kind of guideline with like the elastic, so we took it started off CDC, whatever was safe, that they said and made it into a pleated mask. So there are constraints, we are donating these to as many people as we can. So the constraints are that we have to maximize fabric. So the way we do that is we cut it into rectangles and then have people make pleated masks, because least fabric is wasted. I have to do a bunch of like math calculations to like, optimize amount of fabric and elastic. Wow, price per mask, things like that. But once I figured it out, like figured out what was the most optimal for like and cost efficient. We’ve just stuck with that, because there was so much calculations behind it. But people that use their own materials, they go create it because they love to sew, they have all these different fabric designs, they get excited with the different things they could do. So they have the best fitted masks. They have different types of layers inside the thing they have nosepieces there’s a lot that goes on.
Greg Owens 26:53
Yeah,
Sohum Phadke 26:54
right, right. Yeah. One thing that hasn’t changed, which is completely credited to Nitya is the quality of our masks, we get that all the time that it because like somebody might have gone in a mastermind in March, when we were making a lot less mass. And now that we’re making like 10 times the amount, the quality has still remained the same. And so we always get compliments about our designs and how it’s been consistent. And people appreciate that. So yeah, it’s really,
Nitya Devisetti 27:23
this goes back to the transparency thing. Like, even though I wanted to grow super large, and like make so many more masks, I never want to compromise the important things like quality. Like, if someone wasn’t adept at sewing, I wasn’t going to accept them as a volunteer because we’re spending money, people’s money that they donated to cause like to help other people. So if they didn’t know how to sew, but they wanted like volunteer hours, or they just want to help out. I couldn’t accept them, even though I really, really want to be a large organization have everyone involved. Because we needed to donate to these donate these to like real people that needed to stay safe out there. So
Greg Owens 28:06
right. So you’re looking for people that have a little bit of skills and can do some sewing and you’re not teaching them how to sew.
Nitya Devisetti 28:12
Yeah, but one thing I did get around to doing is providing them practice fabric that I had lying around at home. And I was just like, it’s okay, if you don’t know how to sew, don’t lie about it. I’ll work with you and give you practice fabric. And you can practice on this. And then one, send me a picture of your mask or your practice. And I’ll see if it’s good enough for you to get the materials to donate to actual people.
Greg Owens 28:36
Right, right. That’s so great. And so And who are these masks going to mostly? Where do you see where do you see the biggest needs in the community? Right, like, like, and I’m curious, like Cupertino, for instance. I know, Cupertino. Its Cupertino is not known for having like a bigger homeless problem or something like that. Right. But so so tell me like where they’re going. And I’m sure in other communities, there’s different, there’s different avenues where you have to go?
Nitya Devisetti 29:06
Yeah, definitely. So in the beginning, we reached out to hospitals, police stations, fire stations, we were trying to equip our first responders, um, people that were saving or helping keep our community safe, as in
Greg Owens 29:21
the beginning days, there was a shortage of them. Right. And you guys are reaching out. You were reaching out to the people that needed them first.
Nitya Devisetti 29:27
Yeah, definitely. And we were also trying to show them like our communities here for you to city of Cupertino has come together and made these cards made these masks for you. And they really appreciated that. And as we kept going, we started donating to nursing homes, like with elderly homeless shelters. And as so have mentioned earlier, we didn’t really expand on this too much. We are doing meal distributions. We’re partnered with school districts actually And what they do is they do have meal distributions for the community, specifically targeted towards low income students, but just the community in general, and we sit there and the sun along with the cafeteria people, obviously. And we deliver masks. So they roll down their window. Some people come in without masks, and they need masks actually go get their meals. So we’re just like, Hey, we’re giving out free masks for your family. And they roll down their window, we distribute like three or four that they want, and then they get their meals on them. They go home.
Greg Owens 30:36
Oh, man, that’s so great. Yeah, that’s got to be really rewarding. Me to be on the front lines. They’re handing out the masks right
there. Yeah,
yeah. And Nikhil. Like, your, your, your primary job is managing the people that are are making the masks, right?
Nikhil Pasumarthi 30:55
Yeah.
Greg Owens 30:56
What’s your like, give me a sort of a little bit of like, your day to day life. And I ask each one of you this question, but I wanted to make sure you get back into the conversation here, too.
Nikhil Pasumarthi 31:05
Yeah. Um, so every day I checked the Google Form like a bunch of times, and I see who’s interested in making the mass like, where are they a part of an organization that’s volunteering with school? Or are they are they just doing it by themselves? So then, we have like, as as Nitya said, like, we have templates, we we contacted so many volunteers that we have, we have like templates for like every single thing right now. So then, I sent about sent out a bunch of emails every day recruiting these volunteers asking for, like, you know, proof that they can, they’re adept at sewing and like, and then afterwards, we communicate like very often been like, Oh, I need I need this many. I want to make this many masks by this date. So I give them like, suppose 40? Like two bags, which is 40 masks, for them to give back to me in a month or two weeks? Or like just at least right now? Yes. Well, it started we’ve been trying to like work with their schedule, because we know everyone. I’m like, can’t keep deadlines. It’s like really, because because school is like a very, at least right now school is very different. So
Greg Owens 32:09
I can only imagine school is different. And and how is your teachers? Like? Like, have you been able to integrate this into your school program in a way? Or is it like they’re like, No, you still need to do your homework every day?
Nikhil Pasumarthi 32:25
Oh, no, we haven’t really been able to like, integrate, yeah.
Greg Owens 32:30
That’s too bad, or some
Nitya Devisetti 32:31
asks is not extra credit. Unfortunately,
Greg Owens 32:35
it’s too bad because you’re learning everything about life, as you’re doing this right in so many different ways. And all of it’s so applicable. And so so what’s your day to day job, like between, like juggling between school and between getting, you know, making making masking a difference?
Sohum Phadke 32:54
Yeah, it’s definitely hard to juggle the two because both of them require a lot of attention and a lot of time. But once I’m done with my schoolwork, usually I coordinate a lot with Nikhil, because Nikhil does a amazing job with managing our team and just providing me with all the details to move forward with that. So I take a look at the list of the volunteers don’t want to help me distribute the masks. So I go, I pick up all the masks Nikhil house and I go to whatever event we have that week, and I bring my volunteers with me, and we just distribute them out to whoever needs them. Right. So that’s, that’s my, my end of what I do with my see difference. And then along that I always get a lot of questions a lot of people asking how do we get our our kids involved in this organization? How do we get involved? So I spend a lot of time with also answering all of their question, endless questions, right. So yeah, so definitely, that’s