How Have I Made An Impact?
A year into my job as a software engineer in Hyderabad, I had decided to visit a place in Nalgonda district, Telangana along with a few friends to help the poor and needy with some basic necessities. Though we set out with this intention, when we reached a small village in the same district we were appalled to see the condition of the people living there. This village was roughly 80 Km away from a large metropolitan city like Hyderabad and the condition was pathetic for an urbanized person. We were proudly told that the primary occupation of the entire village was begging. The few individuals who went out to cities to beg came back with enough money to take care of the entire village. Apart from that, the lack of basic necessities like proper infrastructure, education, and healthcare was very evident. In fact, when we visited the local school kitchens, we were greeted by pigs roaming around in the school kitchens. It was at that moment we decided to work to make the lives of these people better. The first step was to work on the renovation of their local school building.
After consulting with the necessary stakeholders, we began to plan the renovation of the school under the guidance of the Art of Living foundation. The two biggest challenges we faced as a team was that of manpower and capital. As individuals, we could contribute only about 20% of the entire project cost while having to raise the rest of the money through different channels. It was also difficult for us to manage the renovation work as all of us had full-time jobs back in Hyderabad. For procuring the required funding we started approaching different corporates requesting them to fund this initiative under their CSR program, we looked into a crowdfunding model encouraging people to contribute to this cause in their capacity. We were able to steer clear of most of the challenges by the sheer determination to achieve our mission. Slowly but steadily, our plan started materializing by the contribution of people who saw merit in our plan which we had named as Project Parivatan*. A few months later, the school finally opened its door for students.
Today, we as a team have been able to cover more than 17 schools in Telangana directly impacting the lives of more than 4500 students. We have started a Project Chakra in partnership with the Government of Telangana, to reduce the dropout percentage of students in the underprivileged districts of the state. Our initiatives to empower women by teaching them alternate livelihood skills is something that we are extremely proud of. Though there is a long journey ahead, the journey so far has been extremely fulfilling.
My experience with ABG
As I was unwrapping the foil of my sandwich in my 6th class I could not help but think the discussion we had with our teacher. I was surprised to know that the Aditya Birla Group, a conglomerate of Indian companies was one of the biggest manufacturers of beverage cans in the world and was the biggest exporter of aluminum from India. As a person conditioned to believe in the superiority of the western economy and industry this came as a surprise to me because of the limited worldview I had. Things started to unravel at their own pace as I grew up and along with ABG, the respect I held for my country grew exponentially.
*link to the website: https://projectparivartan.in/
