As part of their CSR activities, Microsoft sponsors a week long programme called The Giving Campaign to encourage employee participation. As part of this, a group of volunteers visited the Akshaya Patra kitchen in Pathancheruvu, Andhra Pradesh, on 24 November 2011. Some of them have reverted with vignettes of their experience at the kitchen and the schools thereafter. We publish a few extracts below:
“It was a great experience visiting Akshaya Patra at Pathancheruvu and serving Mid-day Meals to the children of Zilla Parishad School in Shivanagar. It gave me an insight into the great work that Akhaya Patra does as an organization by providing mid-day meals to under privileged children.
The Zilla Parishad School has three sections (lower, middle and upper primary) and provides education to around 350 students. The Giving Campaign gave me an opportunity to spend time with the children, know their world, bring smiles to their faces and play with them. Serving food to them gave me immense inner satisfaction.
After serving them meals we had an interactive session with them which helped us to understand their aspirations. Some wanted to become doctors, while others wished to be engineers, policemen or teachers. Spending time with them brought back our own childhoods to us. We left determined that it is our responsibility to give back to society and help at least a few students achieve their dreams.”
Nehali Sahu
I am coordinating the Giving Campaign for the second year and when I started working for this programme, I was confident that I do not need to search for volunteers. I was right! We had them in abundance because serving food to children was so appealing. We received all the required support from the Giving Core team, and on November 24, 2011 we undertook our journey to the kitchen where we witnessed the most hygienic way of preparing and packing food.
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We also visited three nearby schools which had a combined strength of about 400 kids. They are among the 37,500 children who benefit from this programme every day. Very often we do not understand the importance of food and how it is interlinked with education. After spending a day with the children I am able to understand that no child can study if s/he is hungry.
We ensured that all volunteers spent some quality time after serving food either through interactions with the kids or by engaging them in some sports activity. Most of the volunteers said that this event was the most memorable event they had in a long time. I hope they will continue and strive to make a difference to society.”
Raghu Nandan Pyapili, Application Engineer, MSIT-India
