When Yardi employee Isabella Mitchell read our original story on Yardi Vasti Vikas Prakalp (YVVP), she pondered ways to get involved with health and sanitation efforts in impoverished in Pune, India. Months later, she and her daughter received the opportunity of a lifetime. Isabella’s daughter, Angelina Mitchell, is a registered EMT and pre-med major at Binghamton University.  Angelina wanted to volunteer abroad and felt called to support Vasti Vikas Prakalp as well. When her mother received a work assignment in Pune, Angelina asked to join her on the trip. While Isabella worked, Bharati Kotwal, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at Yardi in Pune, helped Angelina find ways to get involved. The college student toured several clinics and hospitals with doctors via YVVP. The doctors serve at special sites that offer care free of charge. Angelina focused on programs that assist women and children. “Dr. Genesh showed me one of the mobile clinics that bring the services to the women and children who are not able to travel. These clinics have a doctor on staff that does free check ups and provides the women of Pune with the appropriate contraceptives. This clinic sees about 50 patients a day, 21 days out of every month,” said Angelina. At District Hospital, Dr. Ashwin leads a unique two-week program to prevent and treat malnourishment. Mothers are educated on proper nutrition for their children. Their malnourished children are simultaneously treated with a soft mixture of natural foods to restore health. The mothers receive a small stipend to offset their time in the program away from their families and work. Poor nutrition and early, frequent motherhood contributes to low iron level in local young women. Angelina learned that a lack of footwear exacerbates malnutrition and anemia. Hookworm infects already vulnerable...

Corporate philanthropy and personal volunteerism are vital components of Yardi’s corporate culture, which reaches around the globe. In Pune, home to Yardi’s India office, two teams of employees from the YES and rcash divisions of the company selected a local non-profit organization to benefit from their efforts. Green Hills Group is a volunteer-based effort to turn more vegetation and healthy landscaping to the open spaces around Pune in an effort to combat pollution, poor air quality and global warming. Focusing efforts on rain water harvesting and tree planting, Green Hills Group needs significant volunteer power to carry out the work at hand at a low to no cost. Employees from Yardi were committed to helping out. “Many times, we see that we quickly contribute in terms of financial assistance, but we do not give up our personal time. We found this as great opportunity to contribute in terms of giving of our personal time for social cause,” said Pratima Deshpande, one of the Yardi employees who participated in the project. Each team member contributed two hours per month to the project. The Hanuman Hills and the Chatushrungi Hills, two of the areas that Green Hills Group is working to restore, happen to surround Yardi’s Pune office. So those contributing their time are able to see the result of the project efforts when they arrive and depart from work each day. Work includes development of a Continuous Contour Trench to be used for rainwater harvesting, preparing soil beds for planting, building tanks and drip-irrigation to self-water the trees in the future, after they reach more than 500 in number. A portion of the trees in the project are fruit trees, and produce from the trees is harvested by volunteers to deliver to needy Pune children and...