ODC Indoor Games Tournament (November 11, 2008)

The One Day Challenge indoor games tournament has been conducted at Chennai to foster a sense of healthy competition between Chennai staff and above all to raise funds for SIFGSS. The games included Chess, Carrom and Table Tennis. The initial league matches have been going on each evening for several days now (from 4 November'08 onwards!!). The finals were conducted on Monday, 10 November. Though the tournament was supposed to be a fun fundraiser, the games were played in the spirit of true competition and none of the participants were willing to let go and fought tooth and nail to stay in the competition and reach the finals.

Here are the results of the finals.

CARROM - SINGLES; K.Nitin of Tesco winning the Title against P.Kotharu of FSA (4 boards to 2). The cheering spectators made the match much more exciting.

CARROM - DOUBLES: A dramatic finals with Noel Johnson/Venkatram of BT CASH, winning the Title against K.Nitin/Balaji s of Tesco/O2 Accounts Payable (4 boards to 0)

Our heartiest congratulations to all the participants

TT - DOUBLES FINALS; A close and tight match between Subramani/Prasanna of BSCO and K.Nitin/Arun kalayan of Tesco. Finally Subramani and Prasanna kept their nerves cool and emerged winners. Score: 4 sets to 3. Final set had 4 match points.

The chess matches are going on and the results will be announced shortly.

ODC Cricket and Football (November 10, 2008)

Finals - Inter-school T20 Cricket and Inter-school Football

As a run up to One Day Challenge, a T20 Cricket tournament, as well as a Football tournament was held between teams from the various Steria supported schools in Chennai, Noida and Pune. The league matches which were held on weekends, began in early October. The process of elimination continued throughout October, with hard fought matches between the schools.

In Chennai, finally two teams emerged to battle it out in the finals scheduled for the 8 November. Surprisingly, the finalists in both the tournaments were the teams from Mambakkam High School (MHS) and Padma Adarsh High School (PAHS).

The entire tournament was planned and executed by Steria staff volunteers lead by Paddy from the BBC account assisted by Bhimlal Bhandar of Chennai CSR team.

The finals on Saturday, 8 November was held at the Mambakkam High School grounds, kicked off with the football match between the two schools. It was MHS all the way. PAHS tried to put up a stiff fight but found the skills and stamina of the MHS boys hard to beat. The match ended with the MHS team scoring an easy win at 4 -1.

The T20 finals was next to follow and this was the chance for PAHS to get back and have their revenge. MHS won the toss and decided to bat first, scoring a decent score of 70 in their allotted 12 overs. The match reduced to 12 over a side owing to lack of time. PAHS began strongly, and for a while it appeared as though they will come up winners, but the MHS bowlers had other ideas. They managed to get wickets at regular intervals and really did not give the batsmen many scoring opportunities with their good bowling and even better work on the field. Eventually PAHS folded for 60, just 11 short of victory.

Mambakkam High School supporters celebrated this twin victory with music, dance and fireworks. R. Anand, Genaral Manager, Facilities, who was the Chief Guest gave away the prizes

ODC Environment Day (November 09, 2008)

Street plays, saplings sale, pledges,....

During the run up to ODC, 5 November was celebrated as the 'Environment Day' across India. A 'save the environment' campaign was held by children of Steria supported schools at all three locations - Chennai, Pune and Noida.

At Pune, children of Dyandeep Vidyalaya, a Steria supported school - enacted a street play near the traffic signal outside the school gate. The play carried messages like 'say no to plastics, waste management, save water and so on. Later in the day the children performed within Steria office for Steria staff. On popular demand a repeat performance was also done.

A similar campaign was also conducted at Chennai and Noida. Here the children used table display models to depict global warming and energy conservation, as well as placards and posters to spread the 'save environment' message.

Sapling sales were on throughout the day in Steria offices in Chennai, Noida and Pune.

A carbon management programme, to offset the carbon footprints was initiated by the CSR team in partnership with the Travel Dept in Steria India. The Travel Dept would take the lead in asking for voluntary contributions from staff travelling by air to various destinations and would provide the data to the CSR team. The CSR team in return would plant a sapling on behalf of the person travelled. This exercise would be done on a fortnightly basis. The saplings would be planted in Steria campus wherever possible or Steria supported schools.

Steria staff members in Chennai and Noida along with children from Steria supported schools came together to pledge for a common goal of 'Save Environment'. The pledge was led by Natarajan Venugopala in Chennai, Piyush Rakecha and Anurag Gupta in Noida.

ODC Food Festival (November 08, 2008)

Noida 4&5 - Great show..

With the ODC fever spreading across Steria India, the CFS team at Noida decided that they could not be left behind and decided to make their impression on the festivities. On the 07 November the CFS team set up a food stall near the exit gate at Noida 4. The proceeds from the sales of the popular snacks would go towards SIFGSS, they announced, the cause for which the One Day Challenge is happening in India.