City NGO founder bags green award

The award has been instituted by the Saalumarada Thimmakka International Foundation, Bengaluru. Jayabal is the only awardee from outside Karnataka to receive the honour. “It’s a great privilege for me after seven years of starting Raindropss, in 2011; we have several programmes in the fields of educating children, feeding the poor, working with the disabled, as well as creating environmental awareness. Music director AR Raihanah (AR Rahman’s sister), is the goodwill ambassador of our organisation. In fact, our tribute song Idhu Namma Bhoomi was widely appreciated nationally, and brought our green crusade to light,” says Jayabal. 

The award was instituted in the name of 105-year-old environmentalist Saalumarada Thimmakka, renowned for planting over 8,000 trees in 80 years. The youngster adds, “Moving forward, we really want to improve on our work with differently-abled people in Chennai. We are setting up a temporary ramp for them to use once a month at the beach. We will also continue our service in all the other sectors.