Shrimad Rajchandra Educational Aids 2019 is a great opportunity for volunteers to make a difference in the lives of rural students. Putting their compassion into action, over 800 students from standards 8-12 came together to distribute notebooks and stationery items to over 3000 rural students around Dharampur, Gujarat! Student volunteers had the opportunity to contribute in various activities such as billing, logistics, accounts, inventory management, warehouse cleaning, and door-to-door awareness activities!
To ensure that maximum number of rural students could benefit from this programme, volunteers travelled to remote interior villages in vans to distribute books and stationery to families right at their doorstep! As part of the offline awareness campaign, volunteers distributed over 30,000 handbills and 5000 promotional flyers, and even installed over 400 banners across prominent junctions and roads. Volunteers also went door-to-door to distribute freebies and educate families about the benefits they could avail from the programme. An innovative campaign involved decorating rickshaws with promotional material. Seeing the enthusiasm of volunteers, few rickshaw drivers did not accept any money for installing banners on their rickshaws! Volunteers were also involved in the behind-the-scenes operations – teams were made responsible for checking and managing the inventory at various sites, and with the loading and unloading of trucks. Considering no task to be too small, volunteers also happily participated in the clean-up of the warehouses and distribution centres!
Coming from urban cities, these student volunteers had the opportunity to widen their horizons and understand the true reality that thousands of other students their age face. Going out of their comfort zone, they went the extra mile to show their compassion and extend their love and care to the rural and tribal students around Dharampur!