Battling tough times during COVID-19

Since few years, Action for Pune Development (APD) has been working on  various issues such as environmental conservation, education for underprivileged , youth and women empowerment , road safety, etc. The young members of APD have aspirations to make a worthwhile contribution towards social development and are willing to make use of innovative methods for the same.

In times of this global crisis of COVID-19, the members of APD chose to play a role to join the fight against coronavirus. There are various concerns which arose during this situation. Due to the lockdown, business got disrupted, daily wage workers faced a dire situation and daily life came to a standstill.

In this situation, APD decided to focus one  issue which needed immediate action. Pune city has a large elderly population. Many people settle in Pune after retirement it offers a peaceful lifestyle. But now they face an unavoidable issue. While the lockdown is necessary to control the spread of the disease, getting essentials like groceries and medicines has become difficult.

About 30% of the people above age 65 have poor health and insufficient medical care as their primary issue. Thus, making medicines and every-day essentials reach them in the earliest possible time is what APD aimed for. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the youth to take care of the elderly population.

The method adopted is as follows -

• APD has a team of 80+ volunteers based in various parts throughout the city. 
• Whenever someone needs assistance, they contact the organisation and provide necessary information like name, address and the list of essentials. 
• This information is then shared with the volunteer who resides in the vicinity of the person who has made a request. 
• Every volunteer follows a strict protocol and makes use of personal protection equipment like a mask, sanitizer, and gloves. 
• The volunteer then picks up the required goods from the nearby stores and delivers them to the destination while making  minimum or zero direct contact. 

APD is fortunate to have received an overwhelming support from the Pune Police. This makes sure we can conduct this work without any hurdles. People can volunteer for this task by simply contacting APD through social media, emails, calls etc. and requests for assistance can be made in the same way.

Owing to social media, there has been a wide outreach of this campaign and we are happy to announce that we have been able to help 400+ elderly couples and will continue to do so in the coming days. We would also like to extend gratitude to the frontline covid warriors like doctors, nurses, police, cleaners, government workers, shop owners for working diligently in these trying times and making life safer for the common people.

A humble request to everyone to stay home and stay safe as well as make it safer for the people fighting out there!

Our Corona Warriors:

Reported by
Apurv Deshpande

TedX-PICT - Lessons from a Youth Activist - Aakash Shah

The founder and chairperson of Action For Pune Development, Aakash Shah, has been invited as a key-note speaker at numerous significant events across the world including United Nations My World 2.0 workshop in New York, UN Habitat-Young Social Innovators Conclave at Mumbai, Global Meeting of "Global Alliance for NGO's advocating for road safety at Marrakesh, Morocco & 35th session of Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland.

On September 30th 2017, Aakash was invited as a speaker at PICT TEDx 2017, which was hosted in Pune , attended by an audience of over 500. Aakash was the youngest speaker at the event. He shared his journey since inception and proved to be a strong source of motivation for engaging youth in community service and social development. Aakash has always been an inspiration to youth across the world. Being a youth activist and having worked with several multi-lateral agencies, he has successfully mobilised youth worldwide and formulated strategies for a number of global campaigns such as UN Millennium My World 2015 and World We Want, SaveKidsLives, HeForShe, etc. He has personified the power of youth and his exemplary work has been truly motivating not just for youth of the nation, but youth across the world. Aakash started his journey at a very young age, and is working towards integration of youth for the development process to secure a better future for generations to come. He has included several instances in his speech which focus on the role of the youth, thereby supporting his view that "Youth is the nation's blood and the architect of tomorrow's world"

Video Link:

Reported By - Bina Goklaney, Editorial Team Head, A.P.D.

Skill Development Activity at MKSSS's Rama Sadan

"Celebrations are complete and happiness is doubled when there's togetherness"

Our team has started a new custom, of celebrating birthdays, once every month, with those who are away from their family. Through this, we aim to make a positive impact on the lives of maximum number of youngsters, who are indeed capable of reaching heights, just with the help of some guidance and resources.

In the month of August, we hosted a short entertainment and interactive programme for the young girls of MKSSS's Rama Sadan. Rama Sadan is a home for around 1500 girls, who belong to different strata, castes, religions and income groups; who are either partially or fully dependent on MKSSS for their food and living. Since our organisation has always been a strong supporter of gender equality and women empowerment, we chose to work with this organisation on a long-term basis.

We started the session by introducing ourselves and sharing our interests, and the girls equally reciprocated. Each of the 56 girls in the session, had a unique interest and belonged to the age group of 10 to 17 years. Owing to their enthusiasm, we deciphered how passionate they are about their career goals as well as artistic abilities.

As a part of the entertainment session, we played housie and the girls were happy to receive inspirational Marathi books as prizes. This was followed by a short birthday celebration where each girl who has their birthday in August, was given a rose sapling as a symbol of growth.

We plan to continue this activity every month, on the last Saturday of each month, wherein we'll not only host a celebration but also a skill development session for the girls, based on their age group and field of interest.
Although this is an interactive activity, our premier focus is development and women empowerment.

Reported By

Bina Goklaney, Editorial Team Head, A.P.D.

Computer Training Course with Hands on Learning at Mahila Ashram High School

A.P.D had recently collaborated with Mahila Ashram High School, Karve Nagar for our recent initiative which is educating young girls about the basics of computers. This activity was conducted from 23rd July to 4th August for over 500 girls of 8th grade. Before we took up this activity we conducted a survey and visited various schools in Pune. This survey was conducted to check whether computer education is given importance in schools and to our surprise Computer Education was not of major significance. The schools had computer classes, computer labs but no teacher to teach them.

We all know computers are an integral part of our lives and are increasingly becoming more important as teaching and training tools. Computer knowledge is essential from the career perspective as well. That is why we decided to take up this activity.

We started off by initially teaching the basics of computers and later proceeded with Microsoft Word. We had a weekly session of one hour each for every section of 8th grade.

During the first week of the activity the students were taught about the parts of the computer and their functions by showing them presentations.
In the following week we imparted basic information about Microsoft Word. Students were taught about the practical applications of Word and basic formatting tools.

We not only conducted theory sessions but it was a hands-on experience wherein the students were made to create a Word document themselves.
The session was successful as the students were cooperative and the teachers were extremely helpful.

We established a strong connect with the students which greatly helped us in teaching them to the best of our ability. This is a long-term activity which we plan to continue in collaboration with numerous schools across the city, with a horizon of reaching out to maximum students.

Youth empowerment and development is a trending topic in India.If a country's youth is educated it becomes a major asset for the country's development and educating the youth about computers will only help us and get us a little more closer to our goal.We really look forward at taking up more such activities which make an impact not only on the child's development but also help the country's development .

The course was designed by Nikhil Khanzode - Technical Head of Action for Pune Development, in collaboration with Mr. Yash Vardhan Agarwal, an IT Professional and B.Tech - Information Technology Graduate from Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal and was conducted by A.P.D. Members who were given training prior to the activity.

Reported By

Divya Jain - Editoral Team, A.P.D.

A.P.D. Tree Plantation 2017

APD has maintained a legacy since Inception. Just like the past five consecutive years, this time too a tree plantation drive was conducted.

All of us complain about the increasing pollution and environmental problems in the city, but do we actually take some serious measures regarding it? Yes we understand that not all of us agree to use public transport or go out of the way to reduce pollution, but we all can plant one tree at least. Why not create more of what is going to be beneficial for us in the recent future instead of those detrimental industries!

Trees are a boon to the entire ecosphere. They detoxify impure air, add beauty to their surroundings, prevent soil erosion, serve as food to a lot of life on this planet and the list continues.

Thus, we at APD conducted a tree plantation drive on Monday, 5th June 2017. Around 20 members were ready with their gardening tools at Abhimanshree where this drive was conducted. 50 trees were planted this year which included a variety of plants like Hibiscus, Kamini, Bahama,Chrysanthemum , Pentus, Aboli and Tagar. Bahama and Hibiscus are used to treat many illnesses. Hibiscus has many other uses too. Aboli is used as an ornamental flower. Thus, all these plants were grown keeping such benefits in mind which could be used by the locals.

What makes APD unique is that these young enthusiasts divided themselves into teams which would later take care of the plants periodically. Planting trees is not where our work gets over. They need to be taken care of and need to be mentored.

Let's not restrict ourselves to conduct such activites to specific days only, but also by doing a bit every day and replenishing Mother Earth with all the beauty with which it was created.

Reported By

Alisha Jain - Editorial Team, A.P.D.

Importance of Community Service for Kids

Action for Pune Development conducted an activity in Collaboration with Garware Bal-Bhavan Pune as a part of its community service endeavour.

The reason behind us taking this activity was to teach young children importance of community service as we want them to imbibe this value from the very beginning.

The activity was a three day session attended by approximately 70 children between ages 7-11.The topics we covered in these three sessions were Importance and Conservation of Environment, Road Safety and Money Saving.

Day One started with a brief  introduction about APD and our members, and then we further spoke to them about the importance of trees and played a small game which helped them to understand things better.

In the second session we explained to them about traffic safety and various traffic rules and used different pictures, poems and small acts to make things interesting to them. Then on the third day, we explained to  them about importance of saving money and played quizzes with them.

We concluded our sessions by telling them about community service and how it's beneficial for the society at large.

Overall the activity was an amazing learning experience not only for the children but also for us. The enthusiasm the children showed helped us build our energy and encouraged us to teach them to our best possible capacity also the children were immensely cooperative.

The feedback received was surely amazing and due to the activity's success we at A.P.D have decided to continue to work with young minds in future and help build a generation which is inclined towards community service.

Reported By

Divya Jain - Editorial Team, A.P.D.