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2012 highlights
e successfully applied to become a registered charity in England & Wales. The Charity Commission is known, internationally, as being an excellent regulator and is supportive of the growth of the sector. The Department for Communities & Local Government invited us to play a prominent role in celebrating Her Majesty The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. We were also invited to the first event to mark the beginning of celebrations at Lambeth Palace, which the Queen & Duke of Edinburgh attended. We were delighted to receive an endorsement by Clarence House – HRH The Prince of Wales’ office supporting Sewa Day. Our numbers have grown from 5,000 volunteers in 2010 to 15,000 in 2011 to approx. 50,000 in 2012. Of particular importance, the schools programme saw 80 schools take part, which is a significant increase from the previous years, and results in Sewa Day being driven by the youth. Lloyds Banking Group – Britain’s largest financial services company, adopted Sewa Day group-wide, so all employees could take part in 2012. Sewa Day is now integral to their corporate volunteering strategy, and is one of five major events in their annual calendar of volunteering. We cannot under-state the significance of this vote of confidence in Sewa Day. In addition to Croydon Council pledging its support for Sewa Day in 2011, we were delighted that Brent, Ealing & Harrow Council’s also committed to supporting us, and in specific to our schools programme that seeks to teach students the meaning and importance of selflessness. It’s always a thrill to see projects take place in different parts of the world. Sewa Day was celebrated from the West Coast of the US to Australia in the east. Of particular note were projects such as feeding the disadvantaged in Hong Kong, to refurbishing homes for the needy in Kuala Lumpur, to providing assistance to elderly and infirm people in Denmark. To know that such projects are taking place on the same day in many parts of the world has become a major feature of Sewa Day and drives many to join hands with us – making this a truly global initiative. We were also successful in securing substantive partners for our projects, such as UNESCO, Amnesty International, The Big Issue – iconic homelessness charity, and The Guardian Teacher Network. All of these helped us significantly in promoting Sewa Day to those who had not heard about us. Our financial affairs, as always, posed a challenge. In light of the circumstances we live in, we reduced our expenditure and looked at new avenues for funding. It must be noted that one of the ‘hard’ principals of Sewa Day is that no fund-raising can take place on Sewa Day, and for this reason all resource mobilization efforts have to be discrete, which makes this task more difficult to conduct. In 2012 – from Sewa Day 2011 to Sewa Day 2012 – we spent approx £14,000. However, to grow further and achieve our true potential, we will need to invest a larger sum of money to develop our schools programme, in particular. For the second year running, the Ec