The Hindu Business Line : Sadya 2007: Corporates champion a noble cause

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Chennai Feb. 9 When corporates sweat it out, it's by and large for improving the top and bottom lines of their balance sheets. But, on a recent weekend at a sunny beach off Chennai's East Coast Road, they did it for a different cause — Sadya, a fund-raiser organised by Vidya Sagar, a voluntary organisation working with children with special needs.

The hoots and whoops of people on the other side were louder than the roar of the sea. When the teams from Nokia and Thinksoft were testing their writing abilities under the water, as cheerleaders pepped them up at Mamalla Resorts, members of MaFoi were crawling up a steep wall like spiders at Silversands, another shaded grove of causarina close by.

Good participation

This is the sixth straight year of this fund-raiser. This time 23 companies participated in the event, which was held over two days. Activities included rappelling, scuba diving, rock climbing, pitching a tent blind-folded and so on — it was just fun and adventure all the way to the trophy.

Sadya was designed and conducted by Adventure Zone, an outbound HR training company run by Major Swaraj Roy.

According to Major Roy, the event is not just about winning. All these adventure sports would provide an opportunity for every member to know each other in the team better and develop HR skills, teamwork and lateral thinking, as success in each game demands ability to plan and leverage the strengths of the team members.

For a lakh of rupees, each company can field a team of six employees and the participants get to live it up for two days in Mamalla Resorts, Mahabalipuram.

Learning experience

While for Mr Sathish Kumar of Cenza Technologies, one of the participants, the event was a great fun, it's much more than that for Mr Ajay Richhariya of LMG Brands. "We have come all the way from Bangalore to participate in Sadya. These games are adventurous and require a lot of understanding and coordination between team members. We could learn about each other better and I hope it improves our team dynamics back at work," he said.

The entire event is organised by a few friends who call themselves `Friends of Vidya Sagar'. "All of us are from different professions who put aside some time for six months in a year to put together this event. We have grown from the first Sadya with three teams to 23 teams in Sadya 2007. None of us are event managers and we do not intend to get event managers in, because the aim is to give all the money we raise back to the school," said Ms Vidula, a `friend of Vidya Sagar'.

She said, the Rs 1 lakh contributed by each participating team is given entirely to Vidya Sagar and the `friends' raised money to run the event. "This year we required Rs 5.5 lakh to run the event. Expenses include food and accommodation (given at a discount by Mamalla Beach Resorts), transport and so on," said Ms Vidula.

Various contributors

The event also got a lot of contribution from individuals and companies in cash and kind such as dinner coupons from restaurants, water and cool drinks from Pepsi, and discount coupons from boutiques.

According to her, there was a great community participation to make the event a success. Force One Security sent its personnel for free, Apollo Hospitals sent paramedics, the DJ entertained the participants for free, Adventure Zone and crew did not charge Vidya Sagar for conducting the event, she said.

At the end of the two-day event, though Gavs India walked away with the Vidya Sagar trophy (created and donated by sculptor Nandagopal), there was a broad smile on everyone's face as if all of them were champions — and of course they did champion a noble cause.

The success stories...

In April 2005, six children sat for their Tenth Board Exams. They are all children from Vidya Sagar (formerly, Spastic Society of India). All of them are wheelchair users. One of them Bhavana is completely non-verbal and uses her eyes to indicate answers. Their papers were evaluated impartially along with all the other children appeared for the exam. All six Vidya Sagar children passed the exams in first class; Bhavana with 71 per cent.

Siddharth, a Vidya Sagar alumnus with cerebral palsy, landed a prestigious job at ABN AMRO and qualified as a Certified Documentary Credit Specialist through a tough exam conducted by the Institute of Finance Service, UK.

As Vidya Sagar recalls its success story, one can understand the amount of effort, wealth and community participation required to make it possible.

Started in a garage in 1985 with just three students, today Vidya Sagar reaches out to more than 3,000 persons a year, with disabilities ranging from cerebral palsy and learning disabilities, to autism.

"We will definitely appreciate more community participation for Sadya 2008 — scheduled for the first weekend of Feb 2008," says Ms Vidula.

To know more about Vidya Sagar and Sadya, just log on to sadya.org.

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