26-year-old Viveik Patel was filled with patriotism when he saw Uri: The Surgical Strike in the theatres on 14 February 2019. Patel moved with his parents to the US a few years ago from Vadodara and now is working as a senior business analyst in Virginia. So when he read up on the Pulwama attack and the 44 jawans who were martyred in it, he was deeply stricken. He realized no one was taking fast enough action to help the families of the martyred jawans and wanted to help them in any way he could. He spoke to Our Vadodara about his fundraising efforts, “I first tried donating through Bharatkeveer.com but they weren’t accepting any international credit or debit cards. That’s why I decided to start my own fundraiser on Facebook."He contacted the managers at Facebook to help him since only NGOs can start a funding initiative there. His initial goal was to raise $500,000. Within 12 hours of him putting up the status, he raised a quarter million dollars, and u

Author-Sweta Joshi