Events
ING Vysya Foundation celebrates ING Chances for Children Day – Global Challenge: 20th Nov 2009
On and around 20 November, the United Nations International Day of the Child, ING Vysya Foundation celebrated ING Chances for Children Day. 3500 employees from ING Vysya Bank, ING Life and ING Investment Management participated in the programme, to make a difference in the lives of more than 4000 less-privileged children in 30 locations of India. The celebration took place in Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, Lucknow, Chandigarh, Cochin, Jaipur, Chennai, Vijaywada, Hyderabad, Secunderabad, Ludhiana, Mumbai, Salem, Coimbatore, Anathpur, Bangalore, Hubli.
Various activities including music and painting competition, movie shows, art and crafts were held to engage children and give employees an opportunity to spend a day, interact and meet less privileged children. As part of the initiative, employees spent time with children, sharing and serving them food, followed by fun filled games and hosting special acts, performed by the employees. The Bangalore Corporate Office event saw the children from partner NGO, performing a special act titled ‘A Magic Mantra’, a MIME performance from on ‘Gandhiji and his three monkeys’, a skit a ‘Value of education’ and a song. The grand finale was a special magic show presented by the renowned magician, Uday Jadugar that truly made the day special and memorable for the children.
“ING Vysya Foundation has been actively contributing towards education of underprivileged children, providing them an opportunity to receive basic education. We are truly proud of this initiative, and it is indeed heartening to see so many ING employees volunteer to the cause of education through fun, and live our social responsibility.” – says Mr. Kshitij Jain, Trustee, ING Vysya Foundation and MD & CEO, ING Life, said, “Through the foundation, we continuously work towards building the society to ensure a better quality of life for children with basic primary education. We hope that we are able to contribute to the society and reach out to more and more children to help them realize their schooling dreams.’ - Mr. Jayant Mehrotra, Trustee of ING Vysya Foundation and CFO, ING Vysya Bank.
A month-long planning involving a team of 50 colleagues in 30 locations with a core team of 4 colleagues in the corporate office, it was a huge task to consolidate creativity into action that is child friendly. Every location came up with their own plans to spend a day with children from orphanage, residential facilities for child labourers/street children, shelter homes run by government and many others. The most unique of this year’s celebration was with a group of visually impaired children who played cricket with ING team in Mumbai and won the match as well. ING volunteers were pleasantly surprised to note the skill and capability of these children. Some of the locations in India that celebrated CFC day have initiated a monthly volunteering program with the same group of children to provide them with necessary guidance to continue education.
- Hellen Keller once remarked “Best things in life cannot be seen or touched, they have to be felt in one’s heart”. ING team which visited Victoria Blind School, Mumbai on 14th November 2009 could not agree more with above thought. For it was a pleasure to interact with 50 visually challenged kids – full of energy and zeal to live each day to its fullest ! Whether it was the cricket match or Antakshari with employees or classical musical performance kids proved happiness is simply capacity to enjoy what you have. It was a pleasure to watch 45 employees from various function come together to celebrate a cherished evening. Photo caption: Volunteers with children from Victoria Blind school, celebrating CFC day.
- The magic formula - get a bunch of kids together, give them some colours, chart papers, colourful magazines, some glue, give them a theme/topic...and voila! Be prepared to be blown away by the kids' enthusiasm. It was sheer joy to see their small hands busy cutting the edges of the pictures, creative ideas and thoughts so profound you would wonder whether you have actually heard them from the mouths of 8 - 12 yr olds! Photo caption: volunteers interact with children of Pratham, Mumbai – a partner of ING Vysya Foundation on the CFC day.
- Volunteers from Vijaywada shared a fun-filled day with children from SKCV Premvihar Children Village, Bhavanipuram, on this CFC day. All 25 volunteers were pleasantly surprised to note various skills of children. We had a day-long program including running race, musical chair, lemon & spoon, painting competition and dance programme. We had also gifted the children with common gifts such as cricket kits, carrom board, snake & ladder sets as the sport items were destroyed in the recent floods.
- Volunteers from Hyderabad celebrated CFC day with 42 childen from ANKURAM. The day began with the warm welcome by the residents of Sankalpam, brief introduction by each one of the 42 girls staying there. Every one actively participated and reciprocated by the volunteers, which was a good break of silence and the entire day was full of fun and activity. We had various activities such as Painting, singing, Lemon and Spoon etc., besides dancing and sharing jokes and small write ups by the students.
- Nearly 20 employees from Bangalore had volunteered to join hands to engage with children in games and other fun activities on this CFC day, 20th Nov 09. The entire program went on for 2 hrs where everyone enjoyed with fun and fantasy.
- 15 children from Muskaan, accompanied by ING volunteers visited Alipore Zoo on this CFC day.
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Strengthening the cause: 18th Feb 2009
A team from ING Life Insurance; Mr. Jayant Mehrotra, Chief Financial Officer, ING Vysya bank visited sponsored centers at Mehmoodabad on 18th Feb. 2009. On his visit Mr. Jayant Mehrotra also visited 4 centers i.e. Sahjani, Imaliya, Jafarpur Tadwa I and Jafarpur Tadwa II.
At Sahjani, he interacted with the teacher Ms. Meeta Singh. He glimpsed through her daily dairy and attendance register. Since some of the girls of this center had participated in the Annual day function, they astonishingly remembered all their dialogs and re-enacted the whole play in front of him.
Then the team went to the learning center at Imaliya. The teacher Mr. Jamal Khan greeted the visitors along with the children. At the time of the visit the children were studying environmental science. Mr. Jayant appreciated the fact that the center was beautifully decorated. The girls were brilliant, as they read from any page of the book, surprising all who were present there.
Thereafter the team visited Jafarpur Tadwa village were 2 center are running. At Jafarpur Tadwa I, the teacher Ms. Pushpa Devi showed us the art and craft work made by the girls, she also demonstrated the use of teaching learning material. The girls told Mr. Mehrotra that they like to study mathematics, so he asked them to solve a few problem sums, which the girls did very confidently. Then few girls presented him with some of their drawing and painting which they had made in their art class.
Then the team went to Jafarpur Tadwa II. There we could see a lot of colorful bags which shows that a lot of girls from this center received prizes on the Annual Day for their participation and overall performance. The youngest girl in the center came forward to sing a song for the visitors but which soon became a trail of songs as she knew a lot Hindi songs and nazams.
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Strengthening the cause: 26th May 2009
On 26th May 2009, Mr. Kshitij Jain, MD & CEO, ING Life Insurance, India visited the schools in Hyderabad. He interacted with children and teachers to understand the methods followed to teach the children. He admired the school buildings and appreciated the work of ARDAR, the NGO partner in Hyderabad. Children of the school, enthusiastically sang few songs for him. On his visit toi the school, Mr. Kshitij Jain, Trustee of ING Vysya Foundation and MD & CEO, ING Life, said “ING Vysya Foundation has been actively contributing towards education of underprivileged children, through its school adoption projects. I am delighted at the completion of this project, which is a significant milestone for us. It gives me tremendous satisfaction that we have successfully partnered with the Government of Andhra Pradesh and ARDAR to significantly contribute towards primary education in this area.” He was accompanied by Ms. Rajini Chadha, former Director, ING Vysya Foundation on this visit.
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Promoting quality education for children: 17th June 2009
On 17th June 2009, ING Vysya Foundation inaugurated 2 schools in Hyderabad under its ‘school adoption programme’. The Foundation has sponsored 100% of the funds for the construction of both the government school buildings, located in MRC Colony of Hyderabad and Rasoolpura in Secunderabad. The initiative marks a successful collaborative effort between the Government of Andhra Pradesh, ING Vysya Foundation and the not-for-profit partner – Association for Rural Development and Action (ARDAR). Both the schools were inaugurated by the Honourable Minister for Minority Welfare, Primary Educatio, SSA and Libraries Mohd Ahmedullah.
The Maganti Ravindra Chowdary Colony (M.R.C. Colony) located in Film Nagar inhabits about 1500 families, while Rasoolpura area has more than 6000 families who are mostly migrants and daily wage labours. While identifying deprived schools, ING Vysya Foundation and ARDAR found that both the colonies had only one government primary school each, operating from poor and inadequate school premises and faced acute challenges such as shortage of learning and inadequate teaching materials, along with various infrastructural impairments. ING Vysya Foundation took up the developmental activity under its ‘School Adoption Project’, and took initiative to fund the construction of 2 new school buildings, one for each colony.
School at Chandrababu Nagar, prior ING Vysya Foundation’s intervention |
School at Chandrababu Nagar, after ING Vysya Foundation’s intervention |
The ‘School Adoption Project’ was given shape in the year 2005-06, when ING Vysya Foundation teamed up with ARDAR to research and identify the needs and resource required for primary and upper primary government schools. The activities of the project include appointment of additional teachers, building classrooms, providing learning & teaching materials, conducting workshops, provisions of safe drinking water, among others.
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Launch of the employee volunteer program: July 2009
ING Vysya Foundation launches its employee volunteering program with a 26 member strong volunteer team in the month of July 2009. This volunteer program is aimed at building relationships, as often both our employees and the partner NGOs see their relationship in limited terms, or under the constraints of the particular program being funded. This initiative had provided a platform for employees to interact with children to help develop reasoning and logic to gather age appropriate learning skill.
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Endorsing the cause: 14th August 2009
Living the cause to promote education for less privileged children, Mr. Ron van Oijen, Regional Chief Executive Officer, Insurance Asia/Pacific, ING Asia/Pacific Ltd had spend an entire day with the children at Christel House. He made an inspiring speech about his childhood, education, his love for soccer and the efforts that made him climb up the professional ladder. He emphasized that education is important to pursue the future dreams that we have. His love for sports was an added advantage as he interacts with children on their future dreams.
By flagging off the Inter-house Soccer match, Ron reaffirmed that education and hobby can simultaneously be pursued.His visit to Christel House was an inspiration for all children and faculties of Christel House as this visit emphatically acknowledged the immense effort of each and every member of Christel House in providing quality care to the children for helping them break the cycle of poverty. He had explored various possibilities of upgrading the services for the children.
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