Many surprises in 12th Manthan Award South Asia and Asia Pacific, 2015
Meet 27 year old Arun Daniel Yellamaty, founder of the Youngistan Foundation and the Hunger Heroes and Transformers project that has in a short span of two years roped in 700 volunteers who buy raw materials, cook food and provide more than a 1,000 free meals to the poorest of the poor across four cities – Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi NCR and Bhopal. He used social media to the hilt to build up his movement. For his work he was picked as a winner in the e-Inclusion and Accessibility category of the Manthan Award 2015.
Young Arun is a musician and member of a music band. In a short time he and his merry band of musicians found out from interactions with other young people during their music shows that there was a crying need for a platform that would enable young people to do something to help the poorest of the poor. “We used to meet quite a few people during our music shows who wanted to do something to help the poor but all of them said they didn’t know how to do that – there is no platform,” says Yellamaty. So he and some of his friends and band members launched the Youngistan Foundation to create a platform that would allow youngsters to volunteer and help the poor.
They started with providing free meals to the poor every Sunday in a few slum areas in Hyderabad. Initially, they started with providing just 50 meals a week to poor people in that city. Yellamaty and his group then took to social media and roped in more volunteers. “Today we provide more than 1,000 meals per week across Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Noida and Bhopal,” he says
In the beginning they used to source the meals from vendors but now more than 700 volunteers across all these cities cook all the meals and do the distribution. He is, however, quick to add that “we felt providing just one meal to the poor every Sunday was not good enough. We began to interact with the poor and find out what else they needed – medicines, clothes, shelters and most importantly jobs. So we decided to do things in such a way that would bring more long lasting and tangible benefits.
So far they have also helped quite a few to get medical attention, find jobs, shifted a few to shelter homes, and rescued a few lost and abandoned children. “Now we are planning to launch programmes for teaching 500 children, work with the police to fight eve-teasing and sexual harassment of women, establish a learning centre where we would use technology to help people from all age groups – from youth to older adults – to learn skills and find jobs through a placement facility,” Yellamaty says.
“We want more and more young people to come forward as volunteers and help as many poor people as they can as soon as they can,” he said. The Manthan Award will be a big help and will enable them to scale up their good work.
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