Tejal Sinha
Poverty in the nation has been a matter in question for decades and years. Poverty is not simply a lack of adequate income. It is a social phenomenon in which a section of society is unable to fulfill even its basic necessities of life.
No doubt we’ve got several activists, NGOs, and the government working towards helping out the homeless. And today, we’ve come across one such organisation, Sri Rajamatha Foundation in Secunderabad that’s working through thick and thin to bring together Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the poor.
Initially, the foundation began with the two brothers; Uday Reddy and Manoj Reddy, now they have numerous volunteers who work for the cause. “We have parents who bring to us everything, right from basic amenities to anything else. But what about the homeless people? They’ve got no one to help them, and when I’d observed so many poor people
around during my college days that was when I realised that we have to come together and do something for them,” shared Uday Reddy, president of the foundation. Through the foundation, the team wishes to make underprivileged children, uncared orphans, and neglected old people by creating one family roof and provide them food, shelter, clothing, education, care, and protection throughout their life. Sustainable Development Goals are intended to be achieved by the year 2030 to solve some of humanity’s biggest challenges within 15 years. They aim to end poverty and hunger, increase access to education, and address migration.
Activities that they work on include- food distribution for the homeless (4 days a week), providing them breakfast (thrice a week), grooming, emergency blood services, funerals for orphan dead bodies, working towards helping over 600 government school students, and more.
His zeal towards the cause has been never-ending, and he wishes the same too. In fact, during a service in 2018, he met with an unfortunate accident, which got him bedridden for years. He had to get over 5 surgeries to date. However, he didn’t let the cause come to a
halt. He recalled, “While I was bedridden, my brother and other volunteers had been a big support. Volunteers have been the pillars of strength of our foundation. We are a team of youth who have dedicated our lives to society. We hope that through the foundation we tend to help out more and more of the helpless ones and make their lives better.”
Their continuous efforts on working for the cause have bought several actors onboard including Sonu Sood, who has been known as the ‘Real Hero’ for working on different causes. Uday and his twin Manoj met the actor during the shooting of the Tollywood movie Alludu Adhurs.
“We spoke to his PA about our cause and wanted to meet the actor for the same. He was kind enough to let us in and generous to help us out. We discussed with him the activities we have been working on since the inception of our foundation. We contact him only for emergency cases after doing proper verification of the case, whether beneficiaries were genuine or not. He would arrange the amount for the treatment from his side. He also shared about the cases in his social media handles, which was a huge support for us.”
Several other actors including Nirupam Paritala, Mukesh Gowda, Vasudev, and Lohith have also been actively working along with the foundation for the cause.
Apart from these causes, the foundation is currently constructing an exclusive education center for the unprivileged children at Patimala village in the Yadadri district. This center would focus on providing tuition classes, art and cultural activities like dance, and martial arts free of cost. “The construction and other expenses of the center cost around 2.5 lahks, where we’d raised 1 lakh by ourselves, and 1 lakh by parents. We still have a shortage of 50k and we hopefully wish that more people would come forward and help us out. The center is going to start from July 15,” sanguinely shares Uday.
