It is Your Turn Now
The author we are meeting today is different; his idea has impacted more than a million people around the world and created a huge difference in making the world a better place. Rushabh Turakhia, the Founder of Your Turn Now and the author of a book by the same name, has made kindness his agenda.
Your Turn Now is an organisation that distributes little blue cards that inspire you to spread kindness to others. Often, we are the recipients of someone’s nameless act of kindness and it touches our heart. ‘Your Turn Now’ asks us to multiply this feeling by being there for someone else and passing on this card. What started out as a desire to reach 5000 people started growing at tremendous speed. Now, there are around half a million cards are doing the rounds of the planet in over 43 countries and 10 major international languages.
Rushabh has agreed to share some of his thoughts and future hopes with us today.
1) What is Your Turn Now? How did this idea strike you?
Your turn now is a global movement of spreading smiles through random acts of Kindness. It’s a blue card which says ‘YOUR TURN NOW’, a card you give someone when you are kind to them, asking them to help someone else and pass on the card thus keeping the kindness chain going.
This movement started in December 2009 and till date there are more than half a million cards distributed across 45 countries, available in 10 different international languages.
2) What were your initial challenges in accomplishing your dream?
The dream is still a long way; I have a target to reach 7.2 billion people with this Kindness movement. Initial challenges which still are is to spread awareness about the movement to maximum people. There are so many ways to make someone smile, there’s so much to do, even though the movement is spreading like kind fire, it’s yet to be recognised as the need of the hour to make the next generation a kinder lot.
3) How did the book happen? Have you wanted to be a writer before Your Turn Now’ too?
So the book became the necessity for 2 causes:
To run the movement and to reach 7.2 billion people, I would have needed at least 1.2 billion YOUR TURN NOW cards, plus the courier charges. I never use to accept donations for the same. Almost every day I would receive true stories either from the receiver or the giver of the YOUR TURN NOW card. So I thought, if I compile these stories and make it as a book, whatever royalty I receive can be used for charity and funding the movement.
To reach 7.2 billion people I go and give talks or conduct Kindness workshops based on Your Turn Now at different schools, colleges, clubs, Societies, Rotary Clubs, Lions Club, corporates, etc. across the world and this is still is not enough, so books would reach where I can’t.
4) How has the book helped in realising your vision?
Your Turn Now & Your Turn Now 2 has helped me go more places to achieve my vision of making this world a better place. Especially children, as they understand when it’s narrated in the form of a story. If you read the stories, they are not preachy, but rather gets a child motivated to do that one act of kindness and make someone happy. It makes me smile, early morning receiving a message or an email from a child who after reading the book has taken this movement further.
5) Are there any more books in the pipeline?
With blessings and support of my publisher we might go for the 3rd version of the book. One of the goals is to have a series of Your Turn Now books like the Chicken Soup for the Soul
6) Are you planning a Your Turn Now book for adults too?
I always say that the target age group for my book is from 5-99. It’s just that it has been written in a child friendly way, which facilitates to motivate at an early age.
7) What are your dreams for the future?
There’s so much kindness required in this world. Thus my goal is to have series of books in multiple languages, and short videos based on those stories inspiring people to be kind.
Watch the video of Rushabh celebrating his 40th birthday with 40 little acts of kindness. The video is sure to inspire you to shower a little love and kindness all around you.
Rushabh Turakhia is a commerce graduate with MBA in marketing and runs a family business. He has used his networking skills to spread the message of KINDNESS – HAPPINESS – JOY – COMPASSION. For this movement and other social service work towards animal rights through Ahimsa and bringing positive change, he was awarded VOLUNTEER HERO in 2012. He is also recipient of award for Exemplary efforts in the field of Social Change by the Giants Group. He has authored 4 books – Knock , Knock, Are you listening? , YOUR TURN NOW , Your Turn Now 2 and Second Look.
