Talk:BAPS Charities

BAPS Charities seemed like it should have its own section independent of the main BAPS page due to the volume of its activities, so I transferred the material here. I will be updating and adding sections to develop the article further. Anastomoses (talk) 06:38, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

The following is moved from BAPS:

Health
To prevent and alleviate bodily suffering and to foster good health and physical well-being, BAPS Charities engages in numerous health-focused activities. The organization operates 16 hospitals and clinics serving over 600,000 people annually, with its most recent hospitals opening in Ahmedabad in 2012 and in Vadodara in 2013. Additionally, BAPS Charities organizes health fairs run by volunteer medical professionals where visitors can undergo screening tests, increase health awareness, participate in consultations, and receive treatment. Supporting the goals of Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign which is working to end childhood obesity, BAPS Charities recently launched a health awareness initiative in the United States focused on educating parents and children on benefits of a vegetarian diet. To support biomedical research, the Toronto chapter of BAPS Charities donated $100,000 raised from walk-a-thons for Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children's Research and Learning Tower Campaign. In India, the organization has carried out anti-addiction campaigns led by several thousand children who spent their summer vacations traveling through cities and villages persuading people to give up their addictions with personal appeals and presentations on the dangers of addictive behaviors.

Education
With a goal of improving educational opportunities and outcomes for younger generations, BAPS Charities funds scholarships, operates 10 schools and 8 colleges in addition to supporting other schools and running hostels. Through volunteer-led classes, the organization is working towards achieving 100 percent literacy in villages in India. In Africa, BAPS Charities has been active in providing children in need with school uniforms, school supplies, and food and in addition to helping improve school facilities. In North America, BAPS Charities also organizes annual seminars for professional development where workshops help youth develop interpersonal skills, public speaking, management skills.

Environment
BAPS Charities manages several programs designed to protect and improve the environment. Volunteers across the world have raised ecological awareness and promoted conservation by employing energy-efficient technologies and organizing large-scale tree planting campaigns and recycling programs. In India, the organization also leads campaigns to improve water supply and conservation and arranges camps to teach better animal husbandry. In Gujarat, BAPS along with other religious sects, professional associations, and civil rights groups expressed support for the Sardar Sarovar Dam project in the 1990s, citing its prospect of generating hydropower, irrigation, potable water, and flood management. Although some groups criticized the project for its effect of displacing area residents, BAPS sponsored initiatives to relocate and aid the affected communities.

Disaster relief
Relieving human suffering in times of humanitarian emergencies remains an important component of BAPS Charities’ work. Within hours after the 2001 Gujarat earthquake, BAPS volunteers began providing victims with daily hot meals, clean water, and clothing and assisted with debris removal and search and rescue missions; the organization also adopted more than 10 villages in which they rebuilt the entire community, including all infrastructure and thousands of earthquake-resistant homes. With the help of donations from volunteers in India and abroad, the organization helped rebuild the area's communities by constructing schools, hospitals, and other buildings. After Hurricane Katrina struck the United States Gulf Coast region, BAPS Charities volunteer teams supplied hot food, water, emergency supplies, and relocation aid for victims. The organization partnered with UNICEF to provide medicine, clean water, and temporary housing for children affected by the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Community
Along the continuum of humanitarian activities, BAPS Charities also organizes initiatives with the goal of effecting positive social change and promoting a stronger sense of community. The organization recently donated $250,000 to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City to educate future generations about the importance of ahimsa, or non-violence, and the consequences of hatred. In India, BAPS Charities has organized numerous activities to help promote gender equality and improve the lives of women. Programs include campaigns against marriage dowries and domestic violence and seminars offering vocational guidance and self-employment training. Caring for the elderly and disabled is also a core value promoted by the organization. In the United Kingdom, BAPS Charities has an outreach program in place where children with chaperones regularly visit assisted living facilities and homes in their communities to spend time with the elderly residents.

Feel free to integrate it here in lieu of the BAPS page.LeadSongDog come howl!  21:13, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

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Advert Tag
I thoroughly reviewed the article's content and sources and can't seem to find how this article contains advertisement or promotional content. Mean as Custard could you please share your rationale for placing this tag with examples from the article's text? Thank you! Apollo1203 (talk) 15:35, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * "This focus on service to society is stated in the organization's vision, that "every individual deserves the right to a peaceful, dignified, and healthy way of life. And by improving the quality of life of the individual, we are bettering families, communities, our world, and our future."[1] BAPS Charities carries out this vision. . . etc. . " Mean as custard (talk) 15:43, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The first sentence you have cited is coming from an academic source and the following sentence is giving clarity on the programs to fulfill the vision. I still don't understand how that is advertisement like? The advert policy states that it cannot contain puffery language and must have reliable sources (which it does). I'm curious what others think regarding this tag. Apollo1203 (talk) 03:20, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I was curious so I went on a few other prominent charity organization's wikipedia pages such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They seem to have language similar to what is mentioned by Mean as custard. As the material in this current page is coming from an academic source and does not contain puffery or propaganda I don't see why it should have this tag. I'm happy to discuss this with others! ThaNDNman224 (talk) 14:38, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't feel the advert tag is justified. The text pointed out by Mean as custard comes from an academic source describing the group's vision.Actionjackson09 (talk) 20:41, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The consensus seems to be that the advert tag is not justified, so feel free to remove it, although my feeling is still that the article overall is somewhat promotional in tone. . . Mean as custard (talk) 21:28, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

@Mean as custard Hey! There has been substantial POV pushing in this category in favor of one branch within the entire faith. Please see NPOV page and the sockpuppet investigation. The users who vote stacked against you in the above discussion have been blocked for the above reasons/behavior. I do agree that this page reads like a marketing brochure as it was probably intended too. I can't seem to access some of the sources cited for the claims and without seeing them don't want to remove too much but feel free to review the need for your edit knowing what was really going on here. Possibly @JzG's proposal from 2019 may be worth revisiting if JzG is still of the same mindset. Thanks! Kbhatt22 (talk) 19:53, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Clarification on edits
Hi @Kbhatt22 - I hope you're doing well. I saw that you removed my edits about the Covid-19 relief numbers I included in the article, could you please clarify what you meant by "self-reported metrics aren't a good sources. Pro-Baps socks were misrepresenting these exact metrics previously"? RealPharmer3 (talk) 17:51, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi @RealPharmer3. The source you used is the entity the article is about. See the above talk page discussion on how pro-Baps socks were writing a promotional article here citing the organization to promote their own brand. They were then vote stacking consensus. A lot of what was on this page is POV hence the admin placed COI tag you removed. The source you used is bapscharaties.org and see this edit here: 1. The pro-baps socks were using this exact same source with these same metrics that don't add encyclopedic value. I trimmed a few blatant POV pushes out of the article but this still reads like a marketing brochure and I didn't have a good way to fix it without removing large batches of POV content or deleting the article as a few users above have previously suggested. Both are heavy hammers I typically don't go for. Kbhatt22 (talk) 18:50, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi @Kbhatt22 I appreciate the response! I just have a few questions based on what you've said:
 * From my understanding, it's common practice for non-profits to report metrics in their annual report as these types of reports are generally widely distributed and provide information about major initiatives and contributions made to society. Organizations like the American Red Cross, The Salvation Army, Direct Relief International, The United Nations, and Medair (just to name a few) all utilize internal documents and annual reports on their Wikipedia articles to provide information about their efforts. Do you know of a specific policy in Wikipedia that states that a nonprofit organization's annual reports aren't reliable or do you think that this charity is inaccurately reporting their efforts?
 * Additionally, the metrics I've included are covering the response to a global pandemic that killed millions of people, these aren't arbitrary statistics/numbers. During a very unstable time, many organizations fled to the rescue to provide equipment, meals, vaccinations services and much more to communities around the globe. To deem the inclusion of information about relief efforts amidst a major pandemic that an organization provided as "not adding encyclopedic value" doesn't quite make sense in this case, because of the global impact it had. Leading to my next question - you mentioned in your edit description that these metrics were "misrepresented", could you explain what you mean by that? RealPharmer3 (talk) 02:10, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @RealPharmer3 It seems you have gone ahead and made your desired changes without waiting to reach a consensus. The examples of other charities you cited read much differently then this article. They focus more on what the organization is and an overview of the kinds of charitable efforts they engage in with examples. This article is 75% specific metrics on what the charity did which in nature was written to journal their activities, likely for marketing purposes by a sock-farm. My mention of "misrepresented" metrics was tied to the specific edit I provided of a now banned sock who was over stating the metrics with a source not verifiable. It seems you are pushing to bring back the exact same info albeit more accurate to the charities self-reporting. This has nothing to do with the nature of the pandemic or the impacts of it but rather ensuring this article moves in a better direction and not a continuation of where the socks left off. Using your example of the Red Cross, they provided astronomically more aide then most groups but their page summarizes that they provide pandemic aid and some of their recognition but doesn't state how many masks and hand sanitizer bottles. A running tally is always changing and becomes difficult to verify and update. Just my 2 cents. In the future, wait for a consensus to be reached before making the desired edits to ensure there isn't an edit warring situation. Kbhatt22 (talk) 18:06, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Hey @Kbhatt22,
 * I'd like to start out and say that I like to be cordial and collaborative when I'm editing and I assume good faith for other users I interact with, so if you have a disagreement with me, I really insist you speak about it with me so we can figure out what actually make sense with valid justification instead of deleting each others work. I did some research and found several discrepancies in what you are presenting. Although your motive for trying to protect the article from editors with the wrong intention is noble, I don't believe you are necessarily going about it the right way. Gatekeeping it with very little involvement in the article will not improve it - especially if you just delete content without doing your own due diligence.
 * For example, I'm not trying to step on any toes but, I initially added information about Covid relief efforts from the annual report, and you deleted it without discussion, therefore I undid your revision as I don't believe you had appropriate justification to do that. Further, you're saying that the original metrics were inserted by a user that was "over stating the metrics with a source not verifiable" and that the annual report is "self reported metrics," so are you saying that they are lying in their reporting/they aren't verifiable? Because contrary to your belief, the "high numbers" that I included pertaining to the Covid-19 relief efforts were from the annual report, and other health networks like the Orlando Health Foundation and enla.org further justified that the numbers are in fact on par. In my experience with the charities that I've researched, annual reports can be pretty useful to get an understanding of what an organization is doing and contributing, so please let me know if there is evidence of this charity publicizing fake contributions, because as far as I have looked, I haven't come across it.
 * Also, you removed "As an extension of their spiritual beliefs and practice, the organization's volunteers participated in charitable activities focused on fighting addiction and helping the poor during this period. BAPS registered a charity wing in 1950 with a goal of engaging in larger social and charitable works." on the grounds of "remove claims from COI sources used by socks", but from my experience with AfD's and specifically WP:CONRED (Section D principle applies here as well) - you deleted the entire sentence, probably without doing any research. I did one dry search of the term "BAPS Charities" on google scholar and the first link that shows up is a solid source published by Routledge called Global Religious Movements Across Borders, and within the first page of the chapter: BAPS Swaminarayan Community: Hinduism, the information you deleted is presented (btw I added that source in the article as well). I think if your intent is to really improve to the article, a little more effort will be required. :) RealPharmer3 (talk) 16:36, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @RealPharmer3 - I think you are skewing things. I did not delete your edits but reverted the page back to what it was to discuss your edits as they raised some concerns. Your edits are what we are trying to reach consensus for, not my act of reversion. So the page exists the way it was and we discuss your changes to reach consensus. Especially since one of the things you removed was the COI tag placed by an admin at the top of the page and the other was an edit that matched one previously by a known sock. Its not in the least bit "cordial and collaborative" to move forward to re-implement the changes without consensus being reached. The COI tag has to stay for obvious reasons and if you think this page is better continued as a journal of everything this group does as opposed to an overview of the kinds of work they do then I suppose we are in disagreement there. Kbhatt22 (talk) 18:08, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Hey @Kbhatt22,
 * My apologies, I think there are a lot of things being discussed at once between the both of us, and I don't think it's serving us well in finding a common ground. I think if we want to collaborate, the best thing we can try to do is dissect the issue. Let's try to move forward with a step-by-step approach, so we can make sure that we are understanding each other and come to some type of resolution.
 * We can go one edit at a time, and I'm all ears for why you feel an edit should/shouldn't be kept on the article - so please explain your reasoning, I'll do the same, and we can talk through it. If we start with the history section, you removed "As an extension of their spiritual beliefs and practice, the organization's volunteers participated in charitable activities focused on fighting addiction and helping the poor during this period. BAPS registered a charity wing in 1950 with a goal of engaging in larger social and charitable works." I've shared my explanation for why it's worth keeping this information, and from what I understood, you "removed claims from COI sources used by socks", but, maybe I don’t think I fully understand what you're saying, and that could be leading to the disconnect. Am I overlooking something that is objectionable here? RealPharmer3 (talk) 16:26, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * My apologies, I think there are a lot of things being discussed at once between the both of us, and I don't think it's serving us well in finding a common ground. I think if we want to collaborate, the best thing we can try to do is dissect the issue. Let's try to move forward with a step-by-step approach, so we can make sure that we are understanding each other and come to some type of resolution.
 * We can go one edit at a time, and I'm all ears for why you feel an edit should/shouldn't be kept on the article - so please explain your reasoning, I'll do the same, and we can talk through it. If we start with the history section, you removed "As an extension of their spiritual beliefs and practice, the organization's volunteers participated in charitable activities focused on fighting addiction and helping the poor during this period. BAPS registered a charity wing in 1950 with a goal of engaging in larger social and charitable works." I've shared my explanation for why it's worth keeping this information, and from what I understood, you "removed claims from COI sources used by socks", but, maybe I don’t think I fully understand what you're saying, and that could be leading to the disconnect. Am I overlooking something that is objectionable here? RealPharmer3 (talk) 16:26, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * We can go one edit at a time, and I'm all ears for why you feel an edit should/shouldn't be kept on the article - so please explain your reasoning, I'll do the same, and we can talk through it. If we start with the history section, you removed "As an extension of their spiritual beliefs and practice, the organization's volunteers participated in charitable activities focused on fighting addiction and helping the poor during this period. BAPS registered a charity wing in 1950 with a goal of engaging in larger social and charitable works." I've shared my explanation for why it's worth keeping this information, and from what I understood, you "removed claims from COI sources used by socks", but, maybe I don’t think I fully understand what you're saying, and that could be leading to the disconnect. Am I overlooking something that is objectionable here? RealPharmer3 (talk) 16:26, 3 March 2023 (UTC)