A guest session was arranged for the firstyear students of Retail Marketing, HR & Financial Markets on 7th November 2019 in the Mini Audi.
As the Guest session was just few days before NGO Internship, we invited Dr Sumithra Prasad of DORAI Foundation and Mr. Venkatraman Krishnamoorthy known as the Pencil man of U A E to speak to our students about the impact of NGO Internship in their course curriculum, career and life.
Dr. Sumithra Prasad is the General Secretary, DORAI Foundation. (A NGO registered with the Charity Commissioner Office, Mumbai) working towards Development Issues creating Opportunities providing Resources. She is also the Facilitator at SAI – Society All Inclusive – A neighborhood initiative of DORAI foundation. Its an initiatives for adults with special needs.
Dorai foundation works on Environment, Counseling and creating awareness towards literacy for Commercial Sex Workers and their children, creating social awareness through mass media, leprosy awareness programs, consultation programs for youth mental health. Mentoring youth in the domain of intra – inter personal communication skills and personality development. They have also conducted Medical and rehabilitation camps for Tribal Community Welfare.
The students were briefed on the various works DORAI does and also how the students can contribute to the society by way of NGO Internship and also in future whenever they have time to volunteer.
The second speaker for the guest session Mr.Venkatraman Krishnamoorthy is a chartered accountant and runs a software company. He has been living in Dubai since 1992. He is also called ‘The Pencilman of UAE’.Once by chance, a friend of Mr. Venkat, who ran a charitable school in India, was visiting Dubai with 7 kids from his school. They were staying with him. The kids happened to see a drawer full of used and old sharpeners, erasers, pencils, rulers, pens, etc. Then they said that all of that was a luxury for them. And now Mr. Venkat believes that that moment was the turning point. Mr. Krishnamoorthy with all the stationary he had and contacted all his friends in Dubai and asked them to donate used pencils. Amazingly, he was able to collect around 1,000 pencils in the time period of just one week. He immediately sent those pencils to those children. Imagine how happy they must have been after opening the box full of pencils, just for them! Ever since, his platform ‘education4all’ has collected and distributed more than 25,051kg of stationery items to charitable schools, NGO’s, and the needy students in partnership with Engage Dubai under the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Mr. Venkat Krishnamoorthy (fondly called Venkat) undertook a pledge of a different sort on his 50th birthday. He thought that it was now time to stop looking only after himself, but instead, to start looking after the needy. With a motto in his mind, he set off to accomplish the extraordinary,achieving a world record for collecting the largest number of stationary for charity in 24 hours (The previous Guinness record in this category received 4,571 kg in 2015, in Saudi Arabia).He now supports around 25,000 needy children every year across over 40 charity schools in Tamil Nadu and counting. Both he and his wife make quarterly visits to the schools to see how the children are doing. Nowadays, he receives not only stationary items, but he also has found tiffin boxes and water bottles between all the stationary. He himself donated his daughter’s and her friends’ old school uniform to the children who desperately needed them.The students were very inspired and motivated by his life story. All need a hero to stay inspired and motivated. They prove to us that no matter how much problem there is in the world, there are amazingly good people around whom we can count on to do the right.
The session ended with lots of queries that were solved regarding the upcoming NGO Internship.It was also an event which marked the website launch for DORAI created by our own Chennai Alumni employee from our corporate office Mr. Sai Kiran.