Sports Kits Drive for Gandipet School Kids

Atria Social Responsibility (ASR) and Atria Youth Initiative came forward to drive to purchase & provide sports kits to 271 kids at Gandipet Mandal Parishad Upper Primary School. Each kit includes a pair of shoes, socks, and a sports uniform. Children attending the 1st to 7th grade of school here come from poor families, with their parents working as maids and service personnel at nearby gated communities.

AYI took on the outreach and messaging aspect of fundraising, reaching out to thousands of community residents on messaging apps for generous donations. We also took care of maintaining accounts, and invoices and periodically publishing status updates to the residents.

As part of this effort, we collected Rs. 2.27 Lakhs from 97 generous donors for sports kits, and another Rs.25,000 to provide lunch to the kids on distribution day. The kits were distributed on Nov 27th at the school. The event featured storytelling and poetry recital by the kids, speeches by senior citizens from the Atria community followed by kit distribution and scrumptious lunch for the kids.

The drive was a success and gave immense satisfaction to see the happiness on the kids' faces. Once the drive was closed, we shared the donations and expense reports with all the donors and the Atria community.

Pre-loved Clothes Drive for Goonj

 We kicked off this year's pre-loved clothes, shoes, and toys collection drive between 6th and 14th October. This drive coincided with the Dasara/Bathukamma festival holidays. We had an overwhelming response for the drive from Atrians, and we even had to extend the drive for one more weekend, 18th-20th of October, to allow more donors to drop their bags at the designated places.

This year we also wanted to show appreciation towards the support staff at Atria (maids, housekeeping, and others). We invited 80+ support staff to pick clothes and toys for themselves or their loved ones. The rest of the proceeds are donated to Goonj.

Atrians once again opened their hearts and donated 4 mini-trucks full of used clothes, toys, and shoes. As per Goonj, it amounted to 4000 KGs of material and is one of the largest single donations they ever received. As usual, the proceeds will be processed and repurposed by Goonj as care kits and other products that will help the disenfranchised or impoverished populace in remote corners of India.

Atria Youth Initiative extends our gratitude to all the donors for opening their closets and clearing the gently used clothing and shoes. We also thank our EC and JLL for helping us organize these drives, provide logistic support and help make these service drives successful.

E-Waste Drive 2024

 The second version of the Atria Youth Initiative eWaste Drive was conducted between the 23rd and 30th of July, 2024. This year, we conducted this drive independently for the benefit of Atria service staff.

Over the week of the drive, we collected 182 KGs for eWaste. We matched 50c to every $1 raised and donated all the proceeds to the Atria Staff Welfare Fund. This money will be used to provide facilities to the 100+ staff working in the community like drinking water and festival gifts.

We anticipated this drive to be smaller than last year since last year was the first time we conducted this drive. However, the donations exceeded our expectations. AYI appreciates every person who helped in this cause, and thanks the RAOWA Executive Committee and JLL staff for their help.

Water Conservation Drive

RajaPushpa Atria Owners Welfare Association (RAOWA) has approached the Atria Youth Initiative to spearhead a community-wide water conservation drive initiated by RAOWA. This is in recognition of the previous initiatives AYI has conducted in the community. 

The objective is to bring awareness to the Atria community on the imminent and serious threat of water shortage in the summer months. The main source of water for the community is the municipal supply (Manjeera water) which has been under stress recently due to water shortage, broken pipelines and the construction of many new communities that share the same water supply line. 

AYI drafted its own goals and targets and used data analytics, extrapolation and behavioural economics to bring the consumption down. We decided to publish daily water consumption reports with details on municipal supply and tanker purchase quantities, the amount spent on tankers that will be burdened on residents, as well as tips to reduce water consumption. The goal is to reduce the projected Rs.2000 per house monthly charges on the residents as much as possible.

After an intensive campaign through social media, digital displays and awareness events, we were able to reduce the water tariff from an estimated Rs.2000 per unit to Rs.951. This saved the community about Rs.11,57,000 ($13,900 approx.) in additional expenditure by just following best practices and conscious utilization.

Here is the monthly report for April:

Apart from monthly reports, here are a few daily reports that AYI sent for 50 days. 

Here is a video of the PSA our team made with a few volunteers about water conservation.

This initiative has been a very challenging and rewarding experience for Atria Youth Initiative. We have to reach out to residents from all walks of life and convince them about the importance of water conservation. We had to use many tools available like nudging based on self-interest, community interest, economic incentives etc. We also received recognition and accolades from community members for this successful effort.

Pre-loved Clothes Drive for Goonj

 Atria Youth Initiative conducted a used clothes/toys/shoes drive in collaboration with Goonj from the 14th to the 28th of October 2023 on the premises of Rajapushpa Atria. This time the drive coincided with the Bathukamma/Dasara festivals as well as the Daan Utsav drive by Goonj. We wanted to conduct this drive for one week but due to holidays, we had to extend it for another week. 

Atria residents once again showed their generous hearts and extended their hands to help the less fortunate. With this drive, we received 3600 kg (or 8000 lbs) of clothes and other materials! We filled up 3 pickup trucks to the brim with clothes and other items. That's about 900 cubic feet of kindness sent to the resource-scarce people of the remotest parts of the country. We ran out of storage room space and had to create makeshift areas towards the end.

Goonj will sort the donated clothes and create kits with gently used clothing. These kits are then distributed to the women, men and kids in the underdeveloped areas of our country. The unuseable clothes are used to create recycled items like purses, bags, file folders, menstrual pads etc. They do not sell bulk clothes to raise funds.

We could not thank our community and EC enough for supporting us, messaging us to extend the drive and making it successful. And special thanks to JLL and housekeeping staff who helped move boxes every three days to storage and then load the boxes.

One more successful drive is in the books. We will look for other opportunities to do service to the community in future.

E-Waste Drive

  Atria Youth Initiative conducted an E-Waste drive in collaboration with Civitas Hyderabad from 17th to 24th of September 2023 on the premises of Rajapushpa Atria. This week-long drive coincided with Vinayaka Chavithi celebrations and the response for the drive was tremendous.

We collected about 160 kg of electronic waste like routers, cellphones, DVD players and such. We also collected another 50 kg of majority plastic e-waste like toy cars, massagers etc. With the money we raised, Civitas will help distribute waste segregation bins to a nearby village where they also installed an incinerator.

This drive was possible with support from Atria residents and Management. Also special thanks to JLL who helped move and store e-waste throughout the drive.

- Atria Youth Initiative