Alumni group of St. Joseph’s School provide food for daily wagers and sanitary workers

Mysore/Mysuru: While the 21-day lockdown to contain the community spread of the Coronavirus was announced, it had some repercussions. Doctors got busy, IT professionals got to Work-From-Home (WFH) amidst restless children as a result of schools shutting down, Entrepreneurs were taking a hit as business was slowing down and there were also daily wage and migrant workers who were at a loss at this sudden turn of events. While some were getting benefitted with the Government programmes, a few others who had no knowledge about the schemes or were not reached out to were struggling for food.

Amidst all this, the St. Joseph’s School, Jayalakshmipuram, Mysuru, batch of 2000 had a virtual reunion on WhatsApp. Thanks to the power of the internet, almost 200 students from that batch got reconnected during the lockdown period. After the initial excitement of meeting with long lost friends, catching up on family, career and work updates discussions, the batch realised that they have a very diverse skillset ranging from IT, Marketing, Legal, Police, Doctors, CAs, Teachers, Home-makers to Entrepreneurs.

Discussions soon diverted into what they can do to make this group productive and thus, ‘Anubhavati’ was formed. Leveraging every strength and skillset within the group, within two days a core team was formed, an initiative to provide food for the daily wage workers and sanitary workers was conceived, money pooled in and the project executed.

The group, along with some of their family and close friends’ contributions, put together a grocery kit named ‘Golden Basket’ containing Rice, Ragi, Cooking oil, Wheat Flour, Toor Dal and Salt. 

The group got to work quickly. Some who were already involved in several social initiatives helped identify the areas where the grocery supplies were most needed. 

Some worked for necessary passes and approvals, some arranged the supplies and delivery, some provided for the safety gear and some went down to the areas to do the actual delivery to the people.

In all, 225 needy families were supported through this cause. It took 48 hours to take the idea from conception to reality and make the initiative successful.

This is proof that when people come together, they can make a huge impact to the society. Diversity was this group’s biggest strength – it took a diverse set of ideas, capabilities, professional skills, contacts and people to execute this in no time. And the only connection this entire group had was that they had all passed out of the same school 20 years ago!