“Everybody can be great because anybody can serve… You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Post 1 week long celebration, 38 projects, collaboration with more then 15 NGOs in 7 cities, contribution from 1460 volunteers and reaching out to more then 28000 beneficiary; we feel nothing but extremely delighted with what we have been able to accomplish with our wonderful team! It wasn’t easy, its never easy to bring together people from all walks of life but a start was made and quite successfully. We started with a universal goal of #SevaSandwich at #iVolunteerIndia but somewhere while planning was done, we couldn’t let go off the fact that there is so much more which can be done. So while as an organisation, we worked towards feeding a fresh sandwich to someone in need, we as individuals took up projects which we are passionate about.
Through SevaSandwich, we made more then 30,000 Sandwiches along with multiple partners such as MTHRGlobal, Tata Communication, MITSOM, MSIHMCT, RobinhoodArmy, LetsSpreadLove, Bhawanipore college, INA Delhi haat, Aadaran Home, Sriraam Housing Society across Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Bangalore and distributed in slums/NGOs/Government Schools.The grins we had after the distribution is above all the experiences which can be defined in words; we felt fulfilled and it didn’t seem like giving back, it felt right like it has to be done by noone but us
Alongwith SevaSandwich, Delhi team together worked towards creating DaanUtsav more promising by carrying out multiple volunteering projects: It was a small gesture of tree plantation in Delhi at a Government School which made a difference to the school children, it was a day at an oldage home where all these senior citizens wanted was some unadulterated funtime and it was just a RiceBucket challenge which meant that 300 kgs of rice got collected and distributed in needy.
“New Seasons, New Reasons to celebrate volunteering” was best described by Mumbai, which went fast and furious with “Weekend Donor” in partnership with Marketing Unplugged. Weekend Donor was designed to help NGOs with creative ideas and witnessed teams of creative people from the Advertising space, contest with one another to come up with bright and innovative ideas to help countries leading NGOs to address their marketing-communication problem. Mumbai also created a series of fun volunteering opportunities wherein educational film was showcased to children of a community and a session on scope of photographers as a career option was delivered to a low income School.
Bangalore roped in superheroes to celebrate DaanUtsav and encouraged children from underprivileged community to color their superheroes. The simple act brought in confidence in children, enhanced their creativity and developed an aspect of team work in them. Bangalore also engaged volunteers from Godrej Nature basket and provided an exposure visit to youth which provided a glimpse of operations at Godrej Nature Basket store and encouraged youth to undertake a career in retail.College students in Bangalore painted Diyas at Divya Downs Development Trust and also helped the organisation in packaging their products beautifully.
SevaMela organised at Pune to bring together 6 NGOs to exhibit their products at Classic cafe along with a Dance for a cause helped the organisations in raising their sales and encouraged more volunteers to join in DaanUtsav.
Kolkata went all out with cleanliness drives, collection drives, flash mob and wishtree campaigns. The multiple collaborations and partnerships ensured the most for the non profits and were greater avenues for volunteers to join forces.
The magic of volunteering brought out the volunteers from within iVolunteer and the mere fact that we were joined by 1460 volunteers across speaks volume for the passion towards volunteering and DaanUtsav. We are even after 2 weeks post DaanUtsav reminiscing the sweet memories of having volunteered for this wonderful ‘Festival of Giving’ and we promise to continue our volunteering journey forever because there is no Hangover like the one of ‘VOLUNTEERING’
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