Zambia

Taj Pamodzi Hotel, Lusaka, with the support of the TPH HIV/Aids Peer Educators, decided to float the idea of a Blood Donation drive to assist the Children’s Ward at the University Teaching Hospital, as another TVW4 activity. Prior to the Blood Donation Day, the Peer Educators went around the entire Hotel and engaged with various Associates to explain about the Blood Donation Day and how it would help the vulnerable, ill children in hospital. To let the Associates have more knowledge about this, Posters were put up in the heart-of-the-house and explanatory pamphlets. The Clinic was overwhelmed with the response it received from the Associates. The Clinicians from the University of Zambia Blood Bank were extremely grateful for the donations that were given and are keen to come back to the Hotel every quarter.

Bangalore

As part of Tata Volunteering Week – 4, The Team Gateway Hotel, visited “Nirmala Shishu Vihar” an orphanage for 60 destitute & abandoned children. The Team spent around 2-3 hours with the children engaging with them and served nutritious meal such as ghee rice, dal tadka, chicken curry, boiled egg, plain rice, milk shake and bananas.

The sister In-charge at the Shishu Bhavan immensely thanked the Team for continuous commitment for community initiatives and the gesture. The Gateway Hotel, also provides the nutritious meal to children on every last Saturday of the month.

As part of the TVW-4, the associates at Taj, Bangalore organized a training session for the hospitality students at BREADS, Bangalore. BREADS is an NGO which works towards educating and nurturing destitute children.

The session was conducted on September 24 at the NGO’s Skill Training Centre and covered topics like hospitality industry, career opportunities, etiquettes and personal hygiene. The sessions were complemented with informational videos, fun games and team building activities to facilitate learning. The associates from Taj, Bangalore also shared their personal experiences to motivate the students. Overall the camp was a grand success and the students found it to be interesting and informative.

Hyderabad

The Telangana Tourism Development Corporation has initiated the process of training their chefs. These chefs are based out in the different tourist resorts and hotels run by the corporation across Telangana State. The idea of this exposure training for a month was to upgrade the skills of these chefs and introduce new menus at the hotels and resorts. 10 Chefs were sent to Taj Krishna for a period of one month to train across the various kitchens and just before the world tourism day a felicitation ceremony was organised for the chefs where the Executive Chef of Taj Krishna was invited. At the hotel the last day of their training was concluded by conducting a hygiene session for the chefs, which emphasised on the importance of the good hygiene practices both at work and in personal life. The Hygiene Manager for Taj Krishna Hyderabad took the session.

To conclude the Tourism Week activities the Hygiene & Microbiology Team along with the Learning & Development team organised a session on awareness of good hygiene practices for the employees of the Food Court situated at the Forum Mall which is Hyderabad’s biggest shopping mall. The idea of the session was to inculcate good hygiene practices in the employees as they cater to a lot of people every day and people generally have the perception that the shops in the mall have good food which is cooked hygienically and stored properly. The employees were extremely excited for this session as this was the first time they were attending something like this and they were pretty enthusiastic and were asking a lot of questions to the microbiologist. The team showed a few videos to the employees which focussed on cholera being a major disease that is getting spread by food & also showed them various ways to avoid it.

Mumbai

As part of Tata Volunteering Week 4, Volunteers from The Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai visited the children aged till 15 years of Family Service Centre at Colaba. The security department team member taught the children there on the basics of Road Safety and Traffic Discipline. He taught the children the importance of traffic signals, what the different colors signify and the rules that need to be followed by pedestrians.

The children then interacted with the volunteers from The Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai. They were thrilled by the informative session.

Assam

APPL Volunteers organised an awareness program for villagers on important topics like Mother and Child health, importance of education and ways to reduce drop outs, child trafficking and spread of communicable diseases.

The volunteers visited houses of the village & counseled them on the Importance of Hygiene, Sanitation, Safe Drinking water. Most of the houses were found not having toilet & the people practice open air defecation. The house members were counseled about the hazardous effect of the open air defecation & its role on the diseases like Hepatitis, Typhoid, and Diarrhoeas.They were made aware about the Govt scheme of Toilet .The local School teacher & the ex Panchayat were advised to encourage the villagers to take the advantage of the scheme. It was also told to the household that the Volunteer team will again visit his house after a week to check whether he has cleaned his premises.

Chocolates were distributed to all the children of the school & also the children of the village during the house visits. The programme was very successful and the local people appreciated the efforts of the Volunteer team. Request came from the villagers for such programmes to be organized in the future also.

The volunteers of Nahortoli T.E. visited a L.P. School named Rameswar L.P. School located near Kodomoni Division of the estate. The volunteers had taken an initiative for health checkup of all school students and provide medicine where required and also distribute chocolate among students. The school management was very happy and grateful with this simple activity taken by the Garden Management. The activity was a success and it was satisfying as the school management and students were happy.

The estate conducted a one day volunteer work at Udalguri village on 24th September where total 104 volunteers participated to uplift of village road. Apart from that total 205 numbers of school students general medical & health checkup was also done.

Today management and staff went to the Kohora LP school and painted all the black boards, doors, windows, and railings of the school as part of TVW4.

Gujarat

The Team of Coastal Gujarat Power Limited volunteers visited MATRU VANDANA ( an Old age home) Bidada ( Kutch). There are 11 inmates in the Old Age Home The idea was to spend some time with these old age inmates of the community, share some lighter moments, have food with them and go for entertainment tour to Mandvi Beach. At the start of program the Chairman of Matru Vandana welcomed all volunteers and briefed about the modalities, facilities and arrangement of the home. The Volunteers of CGPL interacted with the inmates with a smile on their face. The volunteers first took them to one of the famous Jain Temple (72 Jinalaya) and then to Mandvi Beach. The four hours spent with the inmates was indeed filled with love, excitement and interest amongst the volunteers. The volunteers took the dinner with the Senior Citizens of the Old Age home at Jain Bhojanalaya. After the event, when they all reached back at Old age home they were overwhelmed by the hospitality and time spent. It was a joyous experience for all the volunteers.

Lote

Volunteers of Rallis India Lote Unit went to Nutan Vidyalaya, Lote and conducted a ‘Quiz Competition’ for the high school students. 472 students participated in the Quiz competition. 48 questions on different topics based on Maharashtra Education Board Syllabus were put together. The students were divided in different groups and nine volunteers conducted the quiz competition very nicely. All the students eagerly answered the questions within the given time and almost all the groups gave the right answers. It was a highly informative competition / session for them as per the feedback given by them and the school teachers.

As a part of TVW-4, a group of eight volunteers from Rallis India Lote Unit visited Nutan Vidyalaya, Lote and organized a ‘Science Project on Friction’ for the 7th standard students on 29th September. A total of 25 students were participated in the project work. A Consultant has gave an introduction of ‘Friction’ and explained about the project. All the required materials were provided to the students by our volunteers. All the students actively participated in the project work and completed the given task in two hours. The students were very excited and enjoyed the whole project.

Mumbai

Rallis Volunteers organized a meeting of women group of Kolkhe. Volunteers have shared business skills, costing of the items they have made and also motivated them to organise Diwali exhibition to reach their product to the customer which will increase their confidence level to sustain in the business. Volunteers have distributed raw material of jewellery among women group to prepare jewellery for sale in the market. 2 volunteers participated in the event.

Rallis India volunteers organized an English literacy programme as teacher’s training for group of teachers of various schools at Jivan Vikas Kendra Kolkhe. The purpose of this training was to develop English skills of students through these trained teachers and confidence level of students will increase towards English language.

Pune

The volunteers participated in the rally to promote understanding among common people about the problems of deaf people in community and to motivate deaf people to learn sign language as an essential human right. They urged people to make available the required resources in the community for deaf people and promote the deaf people human rights about equal access to the education and modern technologies. Rallis CSR Volunteers helped in managing Traffic and helping the students who are below six years old to walk in an orderly and safe manner on the road that walked for nearly for 75 minutes. The volunteers distributed juice/ sweets/biscuits to all students & participants on the return.

Kolkata

Team Kolkata visited PARIPURNATA on 25th September. Paripurnata is a Psychosocial Rehabilitation for Mentally ill women, who have long been confined as non-criminal lunatics (NCLs) in Jails or in mental hospitals. They are mostly from the marginalized sections of our society and are in the age group of late teens to mid-fifties. These mentally ill women are inducted to Paripurnata for residential Psycho-social Rehabilitation programme, where they are initially admitted by orders of judicial authority or by their families. Few employees volunteered themselves and spent some quality time with the in-patients who also sang and danced. They also carried sweets and snacks for them which they ate happiness and blessed the volunteers.

Pune

12 Volunteers from Pune Zone visited the “The Society for the Welfare of the Differently abled persons (physically handicapped) Centre” inhabited by 200-250 orthopedically handicapped children. SWPH is the first institute to be set up in 1956 with an aim to rehabilitate the orthopedically handicapped children. SWPH is the only organization of its kind in India. All children at SWPH are given educational and prevocational training so that they can grow up into able and self reliant citizens in future. The team spent some time with the kids and donated Bed Sheets, Stationeries and note books to them. Besides they also organized lunch for the children and distributed chocolates to them.

Pune

Employees of Tata Interactive Systems volunteered their time with children of the Nachiketa Balgram at Akhurdi, Pune, on 25th September. This is an Orphanage, working for the upliftment of orphans and destitute children. The session included use of teaching aids, for teaching the topic of Light Propagation to students of 7th grade. The simple science experiments included in the session strengthened the understanding of children regarding some basic concepts related to this topic. The children watched the various demonstrations with lots of interest and curiosity. It sparked many questions and discussions regarding light, light propagation, and even the innovative use of a web camera as a teaching aid! The teachers commended the efforts and reiterated that the demonstrations not only proved useful in explaining the complex concepts, but also inspired the thoughts and budding aspirations of the children gathered there!

Kharagpur

Employees along with spouses of TML & TMDIPL visited Missionaries of Charity, Brothers home at Kharagpur. The donations were collected from employees for the inmate of Brothers home . There are 78 inmate in the brothers home . The donations were T-shirts, Hair oil, Bath soap, Biscuits, Hand towels, Tooth paste, Tooth Brush & Sweets & fruits . Volunteers spent three hours and share stories, sang song with them The volunteers of TML & TMDIPL visit every month to the missionaries and spend few hours with them . The inmates expressed their joy and requested volunteers to come again. The volunteers too promised to visit them regularly.

Kolkata

The employees of Tata Metaliks Limited & Tata Metaliks DI Pipes limited collected donations for the inmates of Missionaries Charity Called Nirmal Hirdalya & visited along with their family members. The volunteers spent three hours with the elderly people. They engaged them with a musical Morning of songs . There were 26 volunteers and 5 family members who came forward to give their time to the old aged. The old aged inmates enjoyed the songs and Bhajans very much as it took them to their nostalgic memories of listening and singing Bhajans. Many inmates also came forward to present their singing talents which were enjoyed by both the volunteers and inmates as well. TML & TMDIP , Kharagpur volunteers donated Nighty, soap, tooth Paste , Tooth Brush and Biscuits for all inmates.

Jamshedpur

Engineers working with TRF and some of their spouses voluntarily chose to spend a Sunday with children at ‘Nirmala Shishu Bhawan’, an orphanage run by Missionaries of Charity at Jamshedpur. The orphanage is not new to this group of engineers as they have been visiting it whenever they have formed a sizeable mass and made enough collection to meet some of the basic needs of this centre. On September 14th a group of 20 volunteers converged at ‘Nirmala Shishu Bhawan’. They had carried food items like some basic medicines, rice, pulses, biscuits, toys along with many other items which they had purchased from collection made by their office colleagues on voluntary basis. The volunteers also chose spent time with the children by talking to them about their studies and playing with them. They also sent a missed call to Kelloggs’ ‘feeding Dreams’ scheme. By doing so that gifted a free meal to underprivileged children. The group has decided to visit Cheshire Home in the near and spend time with the inmates there.