Apeejay India Volunteer Awards is India´s first and pioneering initiative, created to celebrate and reward Indians who volunteer, corporates who promote employee volunteering and NGOs who engage individuals who want to volunteer for social causes. In curating these National Awards in our centennial, we were also taking forward the Group´s employee volunteering program, named ISR™ or Individual Social Responsibility™. Since its launch in 2007 and execution we had learnt that the onground reality was that while volunteering keeps on happening in the background, it was completely absent from the mainstream national psyche and therefore there was nothing in India that celebrated the volunteering spirit on a regional or a national level. The awards were thus created to inspire volunteering in Indians with a hope that such a promotion would encourage its adoption by many, many more. The Award had three categories - Individuals, NGOs and Corporates with an additional Youth Volunteer for a person below 25 years of age. There was tremendous participation from individual volunteers, NGOs and corporates who applied for the Award in respective categories. Our four 5-member Regional Juries and 4-member National Judging Panel were delighted to see the work that was presented to them as Long Lists. Rigorous judging in day long sittings, conference calls between New Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore and Mumbai over a period of 40 days followed to assess regional applicants from North, East, South and West respectively bringing forth 30 finalists pan India. Personal checks

The six National Winners won cash awards. Each of them along with the Regional Finalists were awarded an exceptional trophy sculpted by famous artist Bimal Kundu to represent the spirit of volunteering. To know more about the work of each of the 30 Finalists and the 24 Jury members please visit www.apeejayiva.com

and those done by third parties at the location of the projects brought forth important highlights. The committed regional Jury members took personal interest in applications wherein some applicants weak in English but great in credentials had not been able to present their work well. These applications were refiled with the help of Jury members so that the applicants could stand a fighting chance in the National Selections.