Helping Vidya write
In a remarkable effort, employees of Madura Fashion & Lifestyle, spread across different offices and manufacturing locations, raised funds and donated books to help disadvantaged students at government schools around its manufacturing units in Bangalore.
The Help Vidya Write campaign, part of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives of Madura F&L, helped raise more than Rs.1.7 lakh as donations. “We got a fabulous response across Madura,” explains Purushottam Rao, CSR head, Madura F&L. “The amount collected is more than our expected target.”
The CSR team set up collection kiosks at its Regent Gateway/GTP office and manufacturing locations including MGE, while many outstation employees also participated in the donation drive. “The most important thing is that the kiosks were managed by our colleagues who volunteered for this cause,” adds Mr. Rao.
Initially, the CSR team planned to give notebooks to students in four identified schools, but with the overwhelming response, two more schools have been added. About 770 students from these six schools will be getting the notebooks.
Big dreams
Vidya, in fact, is a student at one of the government schools identified by the CSR team. But there are many more Vidyas across different schools, girls who have big dreams, but are deprived of basic things like notebooks and educational aids, adds Mr. Rao.
“Since the focus area of Madura F&L’s Jan Kalyan Trust is education, we strongly believe that we can make some difference to the little Vidyas around,” he explains. The Help Vidya Write campaign was held in mid-July and will now be an annual event.
Madura employees were encouraged to buy notebooks – each costing Rs.16 – which were then handed over to Vidya and her friends.
The Aditya Birla Group has always laid great emphasis on the social and economic development of the communities around the plants and units that it operates in around the globe. The group’s CSR initiatives focus on four broad areas of sustainability, disability (empowering the physically challenged), benevolent activities for the workforce and education.
The CSR activities of Madura F&L are geared towards education, health, infrastructure, environment, sustainable livelihood and social causes. These activities are extended to communities living in and around its Bangalore manufacturing units.
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