About Us

Founded by six passionate friends in Mumbai, this youth-driven initiative was formed in 2015 when Aditi Raheja, a student of DAIS, watched graphic images of Chennai being submerged in floods. As she was stricken with despair, she was reminded of an advertisement in an in-flight magazine that she had seen on her travels – British Airways was collecting donations for Syrian refugees in the form of survival kits. Inspired by this approach, she put together her own unique survival kit that cost just Rs. 500 ($7). This small box was filled with bottled water, biscuits, soap, one set of clothes, mosquito repellent, and a mat to sleep on, and she planned to send out as many of these as she could to Chennai to aid the rescue efforts in the flooded city. 

 

When Shiv, Gayatri, Ishana, Aditya and Aarav heard about this project, they decided they had to be a part of it. As the group of 6 came together, they reached out to friends and family for help with donations and volunteer efforts, and were quickly overwhelmed by the outpouring of kindness and support from the community. T.E.A.M’s pyramid structure for donations, in which each volunteer recruited even more donors and volunteers to their efforts, created a reinforcing feedback loop that led to a massive amount of donations. Soon, the scale of the operation expanded so rapidly that T.E.A.M began involving more people to prepare the boxes, and was able to make a sizable contribution to relief efforts in Chennai. Since all 6 T.E.A.M members were from different schools in Mumbai, they leveraged their diverse networks to tap sources of donations for future projects, including preventive projects for at-risk communities. This core team has now expanded to a group of over 24 members across 10 schools in over 4 countries, and has successfully completed their 9th project this year, helping with droughts, malnourishment, and more relief from floods.