Age No Bar!
EMPLOYEES of the Aditya Birla Group volunteered at the Ananda Yaan Dr. E. Moses Centre (a collaboration of the Rotary Club of Bombay & Dignity Foundation) on November 9th. The activity ‘Age No Bar’ was to help senior citizens of the centre build an active healthy and living environment. This event was done in collaboration with iVolunteer, a social enterprise that promotes volunteering. Their goal is to bring volunteers and organisations together to share time, skill and passion to promote India’s social development.
A total of 14 volunteers and 65 senior citizens participated for the Age No Bar activity. The volunteers were from different group companies of the Aditya Birla group across Mumbai. They were of different age groups working in various capacities as Management Trainees, Project Managers, Senior Managers and Vice Presidents.
The activity began with an orientation of the Ananda Yaan and iVolunteer programmes and a self-introduction of each volunteer. After the orientation, the agenda and the rules of the activity were laid out. There were five sub activities lined up for the seniors: health and hygiene, nutrition session, arts and craft, team building game and a general talk with the seniors of their past experiences. The senior citizens were asked to form a group of 5-10 seniors in each group, two volunteers joined each group.
Volunteers told the seniors the importance of health and hygiene and also importance of proper nutrition. Volunteers also interacted with the beneficiaries about their past experiences as a child, their first love, their education, job and their families. Volunteers played team-building games like Pictionary and Antakshari with the seniors. Finally, the seniors performed a skit with a social message of ‘Beti Bachao-Beti Padhao’.
One of the senior citizens, Rajashri Pawar, shared that she had a lot of fun and thanked volunteers of the Aditya Birla Group for coming and spending their valuable time with them. She said the volunteers were respectful and kind and had taught them the benefits of health, good food and also given them basic knowledge of banking.