Since a child, I was always inclined towards making a difference to the people around me. This also translated into my teenage years wherein I was always looking for such opportunities. During one vacation at Bengaluru, I was introduced to the work done by Rotary and Rotaract by my cousin who was an active Rotarian. I attended their installation ceremony and was definitely impressed by their dedication to the community. However, what surprised me the most was that one of the flagship project of ‘Ending Polio’ on a global scale was backed by the Aditya Birla Group.
Even though CSR is not a rare phenomenon in giant companies, having a dedicated social vision definitely is. This was my first but not the only touch point with Rotary. My cousin being a part of Rotary in Bengaluru kept me updated with their progress. I was even more impressed mainly because of the dedication ABGL and Rotary had.
This was not the only but definitely one of the main factors that eventually pushed me to be a part of the Rotary family in Mumbai which turned out to be the best years of my life filled with lots of learning and joy.
It may seem trivial but in hindsight, a one-off social event which threw light on the work done by ABG indeed inspire me to chase my passion actively.
Having joined Rotaract(youth wing of Rotary) in the year 2016, I was fortunate enough to find mentors within the club who groomed me and imbibed the rotary culture within me. In a short span of 2 years , I was elected the Rotaract President, a designation that came up with a lot of responsibility.
In alignment with Rotaract’s goals, my team and I initiated ‘The Village Adoption Programme’ , a long term initiative in Hanuman Nagar, a tribal village in Maharashtra. This was a unique project mainly as it actually affected the lives of several tribals.
Months of research and a team of 20 young people all in the age groups of 13 to 25 were pumped up for the first day in the village where we were about to begin our adult literacy classes. After 4 hours of travelling and lots of chit chat later we reached our village but little did we know , we were in for a ride.
Having reached our venue, we found out that not a single local was present. This continued for a whole month. As a leader of the club then, I was at my wits end, mainly because a lot was at stake from my organizations point of view and secondly having a demotivated team could do harm to the other parallel running projects.
This crisis situation continued for a prolonged 2 months however I did learn some really crucial lessons from it. I held informal meetings with my team right from the board of directors to the fresh members. This brought us closer as an organization and even proved to rejuvenate us. Further more, we decided to take help and so the alums were brought into the picture. With grit and determination and an absolutely amazing team, we restructured our entire project, started from scratch , had endless coffee sleepovers and were then back with a bang.
2 months later. Same place. Same team. Same project but this time the turnout from the villagers crossed 100 and our initiative finally took off.
