Students of the visual communications department at Andhra Loyola College (ALC) on Sunday organised a marathon as part of a fortnight-long awareness campaign on organ donation, while young volunteers of Make a Difference (MAD) grabbed attention walking backwards in what they called ‘Back-a-thon’ to bring attention to the plight of poor children.
Students of Andhra Loyola College assembled at the Indira Gandhi Municipal Stadium at the break of dawn and marched towards the college holding placards with slogans on organ donation.
‘Donate Organs, Life after Death’ is the theme of the campaign. As a practice, the visual communications wing of ALC takes up a campaign each year on some burning issue.
This year, the marathon was accompanied by activities such as face painting, flash mob and street plays to convince people of the necessity of donating organs.
By evening, volunteers of MAD gathered on the sprawling grounds of P.B. Siddhartha College of Arts and Sciences. They also mobilised an impressive crowd of students who joined the back-a-thon, walking rearwards, to send their message loud and clear.
MAD volunteers believe society can be improved only through passing on the wisdom and knowledge that comes from education to the less privileged children in society and so each volunteer contributes towards the cause of educating kids in orphanages and shelter homes by dedicating their weekends to teaching them.
“We talk of advantages of our country’s growing youth population, but completely turn a blind eye to the needs of scores of children who have no support systems in terms of a family or a guardian to help them adequately deal with life. Our aim is to help build up an eco-system to be able to give them reliable social safety network,” says Nikita Peswani, City Team Leader of MAD.
