PURE Youth Fairfax

Virginia

Fairfax chapter for PURE Youth started in fall 2019 with a small group of like-minded middle schoolers with main motive to reach out to the local communities and create a long-lasting impact with service that can uplift the lives around and also experience the power of giving. The team has had an amazing success with projects that started with working live in shelters during holidays and continued to serve in the Covid time identifying the needs of the hour. The team now has grown to 8 high schoolers including freshman to junior year. Strength of this time is finding rare opportunities and making them happen with teamwork! This team’s work has been recently recognized by the news paper (https://www.fairfaxtimes.com/positive_vibes/pure-youth-fairfax-members-give-back-to-communityworld/article_ac5eac7c-4890-11ec-9407-fb99a48f087b.html)

Motto: We believe volunteers build strong communities and long have a lasting impact on the areas they serve.

From the beginning the main motive behind starting the Fairfax chapter is to help people who are in need. We worked on many individual fundraising events and were able to help and create a positive impact, but we felt some incompleteness in our efforts. Over the summer of 2019 we are thinking about finding an organization to work with, which makes a bigger impact and respect the dignity of every human being, considering humanity as one family (vasudhaiva kutumbakam) while serving people regardless of race, color, religion, nationality, gender, and sex. Fortunately, we were able to get in touch with Hema Kanthamneni and found out about PURE and its wide spread wings.

We started our chapter in October 2019 with a team of 5 like-minded, hardworking and service oriented 8th graders. Later in a couple of months we added 2 more ambassadors now having a team of 7 ambassadors.

Events We Have Done So Far:

1. St. Anne's Episcopal Church
   • What we did:
     On December 17th, 2019, the PURE Youth Fairfax,Virginia group went to St.Anne’s Episcopal Church to donate and distribute Christmas gifts for families that could not afford to do so.
   • Local Impact:
     On that day when we helped hand out gifts, everyone, children and adults, was beaming and that gave us a feeling that we were able to make the community that we live in delighted and not somber on a cheerful holiday like Christmas.
2. ATA Women's Day
   • What we did:
     PURE Youth Fairfax held a PURE information camp at ATA women's day on March 7th to spread PURE activities and awareness of PURE youth programs.
   • International Impact:
     Many kind people donated when we talked about the different PURE programs. This money that we raised is going to the PURE Programs in India where they will benefit all of the children.

Project Successfully delivered by the team 2019-2021: Winter 2019: Holiday Toys Donation at Reston homeless shelter In December of 2019, Fairfax team organized a project “Holiday Gift of Giving” where delivered toys and holiday gifts were delivered to the Reston homeless shelter that hosts around 250 kids. Many families couldn’t afford to buy their children presents so the team decided to donate unopened toys from our home. Team loved seeing the smile on their faces when they opened their gifts. Spring 2020: Awareness and Fundraising Booth at local event: In March of 2020 team did an awareness and fundraising booth at the local American Telangana Association Women’s Day celebration to spread the word of PURE and its programs. The crowd was really encouraging which brought in some donations on site and online. This money raised was later donated to a blind school and a video from that school made the joy multiply by several counts and further inspire the team and set a strong path forward. Spring 2020: Health Heroes Project: In April of 2020, PURE Fairfax team worked towards a cause of the hour. With Covid times, health workers being the selfless heroes of the hour, food was delivered to the local Health care Heroes at Inova Fairfax Hospital by coordinating with local Panera bread. This gesture made an impact and an opportunity identified virtually landed at the right time and place. Summer 2020: Senior Center Mask Delivery: With Covid continuing to impact and masks was the super essential need, in June of 2020 team learned how to make masks for the first time and delivered hand sewn masks to the seniors at Herndon Senior Center. Because of COVID, many people are not able to afford masks, and everyone is at risk, especially the elderly, so the thought helped several seniors. Summer 2020: Plant Sale for Period Poverty: In July 2020, team raised funds for the cause PURE Femme. Plant sale was organized by collecting plants from friends and neighbors and organizing a sale that eventually raised the target funds for the cause. These funds helped provide education on menstrual hygiene to girls and eradicate period poverty Fall 2020: Inner City Schools Project: Title1 schools in Virginia around the community were identified and reached out for their needs and team donated a variety of school supplies and food. School supplies such as crayons, colored pencils, glue, Clorox wipes and hand sanitizers are among the few that were donated. A food drive was organized in the neighborhoods around to collect and deliver to the needy. Helping the kids in schools so nearby and identifying their poverty situation and needs was an amazing experience for this team. Fall 2020: Days for Girls: Sanitary kits were a need identified for one of the inner-city schools that were reached out. Team worked with a nonprofit called Days for Girls to donate reusable kits for 100 girls. Days for Girls is a global movement that prepares and distributes sustainable menstrual health solutions to girls who would otherwise miss school during their monthly periods. This project helped the girls sustain the kits for 3 years as they are environmentally friendly and reusable. Winter 2020: Holiday Toy Drive: During the winter holidays 2020 team collected a variety of toys and donated them to Second Story Shelter House. This impacted the children receiving the toys and the team as a whole because giving lifts the lives of all together. Spring 2021: PURE Femme Summer bake sale: Fairfax Chapter held a bake sale to raise funds for PURE Youth Uganda project for women empowerment. The team organized everything from scratch including listing ingredients, buying the supplies, reaching the communities, distributing the flyer, taking the orders manually and online, baking each item, packing the boxes, and delivering them on time with a thank you note and a list of ingredients. The whole team did an amazing job and reached our goal! Summer 2021: Popsicle stand at a Soccer game Team arranged to have the first outdoor event post Covid as a popsicle stand. Popsicles, chips, water, candies were sold especially on the summer evening. The crowd was welcoming, and many kids flocked the booth for popsicles that made the event successful. Between the games, the team went around and talked about PURE and the project effort to help adolescent girls in St. Lucia and got some donations too. Summer 2021: Bake sale at Farmers Market and donation to local shelter Manassas City Farmers Market organizer was very kind to agree waiving the fee for a vendor booth at a busy time, when our team member reached out especially when she heard the cause towards menstrual hygiene for St. Lucia’s adolescent girls. This helped the energetic volunteers joined together plan and make treats like cake pops, cookies, brownies, apple pie, muffins, samosas and lemonade and sold them. The team went around the market and explained about PURE and what makes this cause valuable for adolescent girls in St. Lucia. This event being so unique and on par with any seasoned vendors was the one that got this chapter towards/exceed the goal. The icing on the cake was the thought to donate the fresh baked muffins, cookies left from the sale to homeless shelter. This shelter house at Fairfax welcomed the treats and thus every effort made it to the needy. Fall 2021: Afgan refugee clothing drive Pure Fairfax group worked on Afghanistan refugee clothing drive where each member went around and collected traditional Afghanistan clothing. There the clothes were organized into boxes for kids, women, and men and then dropped off at the local AYOF (Afghanistan Youth Relief Foundation). Around 8 boxes and 100 pieces of clothing were given to aid the refugees during the winter season, including both traditional clothes and winter clothes. Fall 2021: Supplies donation to inner city school Supply drive for Weyanoke elementary school was the fall school drive. Team collected supplies requested such as school supplies, clothes, and toys. Team was very happy about the work this fall that could help many people from the kids in our local community to the refugees from Afghanistan. Fall 2021: Help fellow student who lost belongings in fire One of our ambassadors noticed an incident where a fellow student lost their home to fire and individually raised funds to support and donate for this cause and it went towards the collective efforts to donate the much-needed items for this family who lost all of their belongings. Team is thankful to the local community for lifting team spirits and giving together. PURE Fairfax Team : Name Age Grade Advaith Gottumukkala (Director) 15 10 Abhishikthsai Nallani 15 10 Ananya Gottumukkala 15 10 Laya Kalavapudi 13 9 Manya Mamidi 15 10 Sneha Nandakumar 15 10 Sadhana Boppudi 15 10 Thejas Boppudi 16 11