Appreciating genuineness

Category : Jury Award for Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative
Winner : Kerala Travel Interserve

Jaya Chandrahasan, Executive Director, Kerala Travel Interserve

In a globalised world it is important that one's every action is accounted for, in a way that the society benefits from it. Corporate Social Responsibilty therefore has become a tool for companies to emulate. However, what differentiates a genuine act of good nature from just another act to avoid negative publicity is what makes the difference.

The Galileo Express TravelWorld Awards this year made an attempt to appreciate such genuine efforts by giving away the Jury Award for Best Corporate Social Responsibilty initiative to Kerala Travel Interserve, for their Lullaby@Varkala project. The project is a co-operative effort between tourists coming into Varkala and aanganwadis, to help children studying there.

It is really great, we never thought of receiving any award, we did not even have a formal inauguration. In fact publicity for the Lullaby@Varkala project was never on our agenda.

We wish to carry on with the work that we have started. It is part of the project to take tourists to visit these aanganwadis at a particular price. The money collected is given for the uplift of the aanganwadis and now they are doing much better, with benches and buildings. It has been three years since we started the project and it has been very successful, even the UN has appreciated the efforts and plans to start more such projects throughout the nation.