WithYou, say 300 social workers to the needy

Hyderabad: WithYou, a youth-driven non-profit organisation which works for betterment of society in various aspects, has radically grown into a team of over 300 active social workers. The NGO was registered in 2015 with a vision to work for the underprivileged of the society and to bring equality in all possible parameters.

WithYou is an organisation that focuses on building the demographic dividend of the country, to be the asset of the nation, to improve the quality of life and outcome of children in shelters and ensure that every child receives quality education irrespective of his or her circumstances. Citing the environmental changes happening drastically over the years, the team works on all the possible changes for increasing the green cover and keeping our surroundings clean.

Venkata Phanindra, founder and president of WithYou, shares the story of the NGO. He said, "There is a temple just beside my house where an old man was sitting on road. He looked very helpless and hungry and I ignored him at first, but somehow my brain couldn't get over him. I went back and asked him as to why he was sitting there, and he replied he hadn't been eating anything for the past two days.

It touched my heart and I immediately rushed back home and got some food. "The next day I shared my experience with my friends, my classmates and my cousins. All of us realised that if helping one person could give satisfaction then we should join hands together to help more people. I spoke about the idea to more than 20 people and only eight of them came forward to support my idea. After discussing and planning everything in July 2015 we floated the NGO," Phanindra said.

The NGO's workforce is divided into four domains:

Cleanliness and tree plantation

Under the Harithaharam project, the NGO has planted almost 120 trees and distributed 100 saplings to households in Vanasthalipuram project and has conducted several Swachh Bharat campaigns as well.

Education

The NGO has organised a book donation drive in various engineering colleges in Hyderabad collecting over 1,500 notebooks, over 300 textbooks and a few stationery items as well. All the stationary material was donated to various government schools in southern part of Hyderabad and has helped more than 100 children to take a step towards education every year.

Health sector

It has been organising blood donation camps in various colleges in collaboration with Red Cross.

Disaster Relief

The NGO was a part of Chennai flood relief programme (2015) and Kerala flood relief programme (2018). They helped the locals during Kerala floods. Apart from the tree plantation project, the requirements for other projects are managed by their volunteers who work on ground level and collect funds and resources for donation and other drives.

At first, the team comprised 8 persons, but it has grown and brought on board over 300 volunteers who are employed but still give their time to help people. WithYou also has student chapters in Matrusri Engineering College, Saidabad, MVSR Engineering College, Nadergul, and Sri Venkateswara College of Pharmacy, Madhapur. The volunteers are also planning to increase their student chapters in the coming days.