Amazon donated gifts to 300 children from 9 schools under Project Sangamam in Thiruvallur. The gifts were chosen by the children themselves!
AMAZON – MAKE A WISH COME TRUE
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In early August, Amazon informed Asha about their intent to grant a wish to a select set of children who study under the Amazon Future Engineering program. If we selected some children in a school, that will not be fair to the other children. Therefore we decided to select all children in a school to fulfill the numbers required by Amazon.
For ease of collection and distribution, it was decided that 300 children from 9 schools in Thriuvallur would be selected for the campaign. We specifically selected schools where most of the children are from very poor background. The schools that were selected for this were PUPS Old Thirupatchur, PUPS Gandhigramam, PUPS Nedumaram, PUPS Melvilagam, PUPS Goonipalayam, PUPS Vembedu, PUPS Katchur, PUPS Rajapalayam, and PUPS Kamavarplayam.
We informed our teachers, who then collected the data from the children at their schools. The data included the name, age, school, grade and wish from each student. The children had varied requests ranging from new clothes, carom board, cricket bat, chessboard, sari for their mothers, study lamps, football, school bags, watches, teddy bear, dolls, kitchen play set, sports shoe, travel bag, badminton racquet etc. Amazon had budgeted the cost of gift at INR 1,000 per child.
Initially it was planned for Amazon to directly deliver the gifts to every school. However, considering the scale of the operation and the remote locations, it was then decided to involve Bhoomi foundation in the distribution process. Instead of directly shipping gifts from the Amazon warehouses, Bhoomi foundation would receive the gifts and hand them over to Asha for distribution.
On 21 Dec, 2023 we received the first batch of gifts at our Thiruvallur office and we started the distribution of the gifts on 5 Jan, 2024. Our volunteer, Mr. Rajaraman, along with our Thiruvallur co-ordinator, Mr. Srinivasan, visited the schools and distributed the gifts to the children. We had invited the Amazon team as well, but they were not able to make it. In a couple of schools some of the materials were missing and we finally completed the distribution at these schools by the end of January.
The children were very thrilled to get their gifts and took time showing each other what they had asked for. It was a fun event and the children went home very happy.
