Lend a Hand

Updated on: Tuesday, August 23, 2011

They who add to the social happiness index regularly through their volunteering efforts, supporting a cause with their time, skill and enterprise are forces of change that India needs. The Apeejay India Volunteer Awards that has been launched this year with the objective to identify and reward volunteering excellence has just concluded its initial screening of volunteer applications and it is indeed an inspiring body of work that we are staring into.

Arun Nevatia, detected with cancer when he was 10 years old, completed his studies and his BSc in Maths. He pursued the real estate business for 20 years and started social service from 2007 and started a first primary health centre at Mayapur District, Nadia WB and then formed a Rural Health Care Foundation along with his brother and school friends and is presently operating four centres from Kolkata and serving more than 15000 rural poor people every month inspite of suffering from Leukemia, Hyper Tension and Diabetes.

Jaslene Bawa is a financial analyst at Value Notes in Pune, and researches the Indian infrastructure sector. A double postgraduate from Pune University and a social worker on weekends, she works with GREAT Foundation in the role of a volunteer who teaches English and also as a volunteer co-coordinator who manages a group of volunteers. She believes that education is the key to liberation and awareness and has used methods that help achieve this belief.

Vaishnavi Srinivasan, is a business analyst with Fidelity and with a Masters in Financial Economics from Madras School of Economics and volunteers for Bhumi. Her interest and involvement in social work grew from the small activities and camps at school. This helped her see the vast gap that exists in different layers of society. Though she aspired to join the armed forces since childhood, she realised over the years that to serve the nation, one does not need the uniform. After joining Bhumi, this idea has grown stronger in her. Her long-term plans include full time involvement in social work. From the day of volunteering to present she has changed her role as volunteer in the same organisation she has been trying to grow in the volunteering sector. She does financial audits for similar organisations, has created an innovative concept of Open House - a cross-project observation and feedback mechanism that encourages volunteers to visit centers of other programmes, observe different aspects of the classes and capture their observation.

Lend a Hand

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