Working in the field of social service for the past seven years, Yuva Brigade has always stood in the forefront when it comes to helping Karnataka in times of need. From cleaning 300 step-wells, 9 rivers and to adopting 10 schools and providing their support across the State, their activities to aid the society has been varied and timely.
When the pandemic hit the country, their team of volunteers did not shy away from helping others. “During the lockdown we engaged the students by conducting online competitions and by providing them with books,” said Chakravarthy Sulibele, Mentor of Yuva Brigade. A team of 17 volunteers from the organisation helped to clean the Victoria Hospital upon the request of the authorities since the cleaning staff were not coming in due to fear of catching the virus. “Our people worked four hours a day for 15 days and later the staff returned to the hospital taking inspiration from us because they realised that if we can work in these conditions then they can also work,” he said.
Chakravarthy explained that during the second wave, the team of volunteers distributed food directly to the Covid patients who were home isolated in different parts of the state. “We also set up a call centre through which we have helped about 800 to 900 patients with various needs like money, groceries and so on,” he said.
One of the massive projects by Yuva Brigade was ‘Guru Gourava’ were they distributed food kits to almost 12,000 private school teachers who have lost their jobs or are in distress due to the present Covid crisis. “Each kit is worth Rs 1000 and the last day of this programme was on June 4 but still we are distributing the food kits to teachers,” explained Chakravarthy.
Yuva Brigade which consists of more than 10,000 volunteers across Karnataka have reached out to people from all districts. “We have a strong network among our volunteers and just one call, we can arrange 2000 volunteers at once,” said Chakravarthy. He said that the team is further planning to distribute food kits to Asha workers in the next leg of their programme.
