Cheryl Rebello, CEO of the CherYsh Trust has a dream. She wants to help people from rural areas achieve self-sustainability through the women in their region. To make this happen, Cheryl has partnered with several NGOs, colleges, local businesses and hotels. The CherYsh Trust joined forces with Akshaya Patra when working to foster indigenous development through the community kitchens at Haliyal.
Akshaya Patra along with other hotels in the area requires indigenous recipes, especially big quantities of sambar powder while cooking the mid-day meal. The ladies benefitting from Cheryl’s programme rose to the task, providing Akshaya Patra with 100 kilograms of sambar powder in a short span of 10 days. To make sure the powder matched Akshaya Patra’s high standards, it was put through stringent quality tests and scored high on nearly every parameter. According to Cheryl this was a proud moment for them all when she broke the good news to the ladies. “Now it was no longer subjective or charity. It was about quality,” she said.
The programme is now looking to scale up operations at the community kitchen. To raise funds for this, Shantha Pedru Dodmani from Tatwangi village in Haliyal taluk ran the TCS World 10k marathon in Bangalore recently. Explaining the impact the kitchen has had on the local community, Shantha described it as a “transformation”. The kitchen has helped create employment and foster development in the region, and also provided women with the confidence to be entrepreneurs.
Training sessions are provided to these women in collaboration with Hotel Gateway-Lakeside and Akshaya Patra. These sessions address topics like personal and cooking hygiene, efficient cooking methods and learning local recipes. According to Cheryl, these sessions have helped the ladies rise to the challenge and raise their expectations too.
Akshaya Patra is very proud to have the opportunity to partner with the CherYsh Trust to help support and guide local communities so they can develop into self-sustaining societies.
Source: Deccan Chronicle
