A couple of months ago, SThree Managing Partner Sanjiy Sood, Associate Partner, Rakesh Patel, and Mital Jethwa from SThree specialist brand Real Staffing, travelled to India to see the work of SOS Children’s Villages firsthand and review projects that we would like to support as a business.
We asked Sanj about his trip to India and their first fundraiser since they got back...
What was the purpose of your trip?
We visited the south coast of Mumbai, a place called Alibaug where one of the SOS Children’s Villages is located. We also had the opportunity to visit one of the nine Family Strengthening Programmes located in areas which are difficult to reach. The Programmes support struggling families by helping them cover basic monetary needs such as school costs.
Having understood both programmes, we quickly identified that we wanted to focus our attention on the Family Strengthening Programme as our support would reach a greater number of people in remote areas.
What we witnessed was heartbreaking; the people we met were living in poverty with little access to nutrition, education and health. We experienced that each village has its own challenges and needs caused by different reasons.
The trip helped us understand how we can make a difference to the lives of the people we met.
What happened when you got back to the UK?
On 1 April, we held a UK South Quiz Night as our first fundraising event for SOS Children in Asia... and what an incredible night it turned out to be!
I'm pleased to say that the event was a massive success. 300 people took part in this event which was a lot more than we expected, as is the case for every Indian function I've ever attended. There was superb turnout from SThree - it was beautiful to see.
We had a number of different quiz rounds throughout the night and it was highly competitive until the end. By the end of the night, the only way we could select the final winner was by the top two teams playing a game of charades!
The Quiz Night raised just over £4k, which SThree matched. That’s £8k going towards SOS Children’s important work in Asia - a great effort that will make a significant difference. We are dedicated to continue changing people’s lives and we’ll be updating you on the progress.
You can find out more about our CSR initiatives in our 2014 report.