Members of Yuva Seva Samithi handing over groceries and financial assistance to a poor woman.
Sathupalli (Khammam): A teenager’s desire to help orphaned children, some years ago, has laid the foundation for a charitable organisation which is touching lives of many in three districts in two States.
One of the activities of the organisation, Yuva Seva Samithi based at Sathupalli, is to feed the needy. This they have been doing for the past 123 days since March 4 with the support from donors and hotels.
The samithi founder Jonnagadla Raju, an M Tech graduate, informed that they feed at least 20 persons a day with support from individuals who celebrate their birthdays, marriage anniversaries and other family celebrations.
Not just feeding the poor, they built a semi-pucca house and provided utensils for an Odisha labourer whose thatched house was burnt in a fire accident as well as provided financial assistance to a poor student to continue studies and donated blood for 200 persons.
Explaining how Yuva Seva Samithi’s journey started, Raju told Telangana Today that when he was studying SSC in 2017 he wanted to donate clothes to a couple of orphaned children, Ashrita and Jhansi on Christmas eve. Then he formed a group with his friends, collected donations and presented new clothes to the children.
Later the samithi was formed to carry out full-fledged charity work. The samithi started with four members and now consists of nearly 4000 members; all are students below 25 years of age, in Khammam and Kothagudem districts in Telangana and in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh.
The samithi president is Putta Nithin general secretary Vanaparthi Kalyan Kumar, directors Ramakrishna and D Naresh Kumar Naidu, food in-charge Edula Prince, blood donation in-charge Sheikh Imran, in-charges T Keshav Reddy, Tanniru Murali, A Sai Kumar, Mallela Venky and P Shyam manage the samithi activities.
In the last years the samithi has distributed exam pads to around 5000 SSC students in Sathupalli and Aswaraopet Assembly constituencies. So far the samithi has contributed over Rs 6 lakh towards medical treatment for poor patients through donations, Raju noted.
Marking the samithi’s foundation day on August 12, it is planned to start night tuition for rural students in five villages and later to spread to other villages. The samithi received many awards and accolades from personalities like DRDO chairman G Satheesh Reddy, former CBI JD, VVV Lakshminarayana, BRS leader RS Praveen Kumar as well as AP CM N Chandrababu Naidu.