Anupama Kadari
I have volunteered most of my life. Whether it is in hospitals, senior care centers, schools, or places of worship, I enjoy volunteering! In 2017, I took on the responsibility of setting up the Chicago chapter of a non-profit called VT Seva. I feel volunteering with VTSeva has helped shape my thinking and made me a better person with empathy for those in need. My husband and I have supported education and care of several underprivileged and blind children every year, for the last 13 years. I believe service and serving society is a privilege! I am truly blessed to have this opportunity. I enjoy working with this amazing organization made up of dynamic, hardworking and selfless volunteers!! Another remarkable aspect of VT Seva is that the funds raised are utilized 100 percent for the causes we support.
VT Seva encourages people to volunteer and give back to the community they are part of and raises funds to support activities related to our three focus areas: education, healthcare and environment / disaster relief. We at VT Seva support around 1300 blind and underprivileged students in our schools in remote tribal areas, a school for fishermen's community, a school for blind children and a college for blind spread over three southern states in India. VTSeva regularly conducts health care camps and cancer screening for women and has screened over 300,000 women. Recently when Houston was devastated by Hurricane Harvey, VT Seva raised 50,000 dollars for disaster relief. Over 500 volunteers worked day and night for 21 days and provided 20,000 meals, 100,000 bottles of water, helped clean 200 flooded homes and more.
In Chicago, we are trying to build a team and provide at least 100 hours of opportunities to the people who are interested in volunteering. In Jan this year, we have conducted 8 events. Our upcoming events include packing food for the needy at FSMC, sort and pack books for poor kids at Bernie's book bank and volunteer at senior care centers. I am also trying to raise awareness of VT Seva especially among youth and also those who have not volunteered before. We have had over 120 participants in our events in Jan and around 40% of them were children. We are working on raising funds for the schools for Blind students and Underprivileged Tribal students in remote forest areas. In 2017, we have raised over USD 6000. In January, Chicago chapter has raised USD 900 so far. I hope this nomination will provide more visibility to VT Seva and the noble causes we support.
If you would like to volunteer or contribute to VT Seva or know more about us, you can check out the following link for the Chicago chapter - https://www.facebook.com/vtsevachicago/ - and the following link for the US national organization - http://www.vtsworld.org/