Learn, Earn and Return

Yardi Pune employees give back

By Leah Etling on Jul 10, 2013 in Giving, People

Corporate philanthropy and personal volunteerism are vital components of Yardi’s corporate culture, which reaches around the globe.

In Pune, home to Yardi’s India office, two teams of employees from the YES and rcash divisions of the company selected a local non-profit organization to benefit from their efforts. Green Hills Group is a volunteer-based effort to turn more vegetation and healthy landscaping to the open spaces around Pune in an effort to combat pollution, poor air quality and global warming.

Focusing efforts on rain water harvesting and tree planting, Green Hills Group needs significant volunteer power to carry out the work at hand at a low to no cost. Employees from Yardi were committed to helping out.

“Many times, we see that we quickly contribute in terms of financial assistance, but we do not give up our personal time. We found this as great opportunity to contribute in terms of giving of our personal time for social cause,” said Pratima Deshpande, one of the Yardi employees who participated in the project. Each team member contributed two hours per month to the project.

The Hanuman Hills and the Chatushrungi Hills, two of the areas that Green Hills Group is working to restore, happen to surround Yardi’s Pune office. So those contributing their time are able to see the result of the project efforts when they arrive and depart from work each day.

Work includes development of a Continuous Contour Trench to be used for rainwater harvesting, preparing soil beds for planting, building tanks and drip-irrigation to self-water the trees in the future, after they reach more than 500 in number.

A portion of the trees in the project are fruit trees, and produce from the trees is harvested by volunteers to deliver to needy Pune children and families.  The Yardi crew pitched in with preparing soil beds, watering plants, adopting individual trees, and even helped out with a technical problem – enhancing the GPS software developed by the group to track the progress of adopted trees.

The original tree waterers in the area were also volunteers, but were at the hills for another reason entirely.
“Many devotees who use to go to Hanuman temple daily helped. They used to take small two liters of water in plastic cans while climbing the hill. It was very heartening experience. Slowly they constructed more tanks to store water on the hill. They also constructed two small stone wells on Chatushrungi hills. During summer, they get water from tankers (that need funding) and store it in small wells constructed on hill top,” Deshpande explained.

The Green Hills founders include eight trustees, many retired from various industries, as well and students and numerous nature lovers. Founded 10 years ago, the organization is fully committed to their long term goal of restoring trees to the hilltops.

“We encourage people to visit one of the hill on your birthday. Kids also enjoy plantation and watering of plants. Planting a tree is not at all costly and complex but the satisfaction that you will get is not measurable. Just come join us – it is one way to show your commitment for your environment,” they write on their website.

“Ensuring adequate water at the hill tops requires lot of commitment from individuals and lot of team work from everyone. The success in this journey is very slow and is not visible to society for 5 to 6 years.”

The Yardi Pune YES and rcash teams are proud to be a small part of this larger effort.