By IANS,
New Delhi : Executives of top corporates came together Saturday to play cricket, soccer, table tennis and badminton matches in the capital in a bid to raise some Rs.3 million for underprivileged children in the country.
Olympic medallist Vijender Singh inaugurated the ninth edition of the event, called ‘Child Rights and You (CRY) and Cadence Corporate Citizenship Challenge’, at the Modern School on Barakhamba Road here.
The two-day multi-discipline sports event will see competitive matches between 12 teams with 45 participants from 40 corporates under the umbrella of Cadence.
The initiative fuses sport and corporate social responsibility to help children on the fringes of society, its organisers said. Over the last eight years, the event has raised Rs.24 million and the ninth edition is also expected to mop up close to Rs.3 million.
The proceeds will be used for funding a holistic welfare project ‘Kislay’ for children of migrants on the outskirts of the capital.
Boxer Vijender Singh said it was an honour for him to be associated with the cause.
“Thousands of children in our country have no access to education and are denied their rights. I hope CRY and Cadence, as two of the country’s leading child welfare organisations, can address their needs,” said Vijender, who won the bronze medal in the Beijing Olympics.
He urged youngsters to take to boxing in a bigger way. “Boxing is such a discipline that even children from the middle class can train in. Many youngsters from the heartland are now at the forefront of this sport,” Vijender told IANS.
The Olympian hoped that there would be a time in the near future, when the country’s medal tally in the Olympics would reach 100.
The participating companies include Sun Microsystems, Cadence, The Oberoi, Radisson, KPMG and DCM-Shriram.
“Last year, the CRY-Cadence Corporate Citizenship Challenge campaigned for the rights of the girl child. This year, the focus is on education for children. The partnership has also increased in scope and geography over the years to cover cities like Delhi, Bangalore, Chandigarh and London,” said Anita Bala Sharad, general manager of Resource Generation of CRY.
The event was earlier known as Corporate Cricket Citizenship Challenge.
“We conceived the event eight years ago following interactions with people of the upper middle class income groups who wanted to do something for the society but did not know how to go about it. So we thought, if we could create a platform for awareness, it would help build the momentum,” said Jaswinder S. Ahuja, corporate vice-president and managing director of Cadence Design Systems Pvt Ltd, the co-sponsor.
“In the beginning, we were focused on cricket, but this year we have changed the format to include more disciplines,” Ahuja added.
According to a CRY estimate, nearly 17 million children across the country report to work everyday, when they should be attending school and 42 percent of primary classes are still conducted in the open in the absence of school buildings.