Every Global Month of Volunteering, Amazon employees and associates across India step away momentarily from their desks, warehouses and delivery routes to volunteer in their communities. The Global Month of Volunteering (GMV) is Amazon’s flagship campaign that turns individual effort and contributions into coordinated action—across cities, causes and communities. It's built on a simple belief: that with scale comes responsibility—and the same infrastructure, logistics and people that help Amazon serve millions of customers can also be directed towards community needs that need sustained attention.
More than 65,000 employees and associates volunteered across India during this program this year—spanning corporate offices and operations sites. Together, they logged over 1.6 lakh volunteering hours across 8 cities and 1,926 operations sites. What made this year different: 70% of all corporate events were employee-led. These weren't programmes organized at a company level—they were created by employees who saw a need in their community and organised others to show up.
What those hours contributed to
Food security: 192,000 meals and counting
Across Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi and Pune, volunteers assembled ration kits supporting over 192,000 meals for daily wage workers, domestic workers and families facing economic hardship. In Delhi, kits also supported families rebuilding after a fire affected their community. In Bengaluru, 589 volunteers came together on a single day to pack 2,400 kits for tribal communities in remote areas—each kit covering one to two weeks of staple food for a household.
Through Amazon Community Kitchen events across three cities, more than 600 volunteers cooked and served over 5,000 freshly prepared meals to health and sanitation workers and nearby communities. Volunteers also supported food security through protein kit packing drives across multiple operations sites—packing and distributing nutrition kits for orphanage beneficiaries. The Fun Food Riddle initiative saw volunteers create engaging nutrition awareness cards, helping promote healthy eating habits among 1,500 community beneficiaries.
Education: skills that outlast the event
Over 1,000 young people received career mentoring — one-on-one resume reviews and guidance sessions led by Amazon volunteers and senior leaders. These aren't one-off interactions. Students walk away with revised resumes, clearer career direction and in many cases, the confidence to pursue paths they hadn't considered.
Across 13 schools, volunteers worked on infrastructure upgrades and learning space transformations, reaching more than 6,000 students. At Government Higher Primary School in Bengaluru, volunteers painted educational wall art, refreshed playground structures, built recycled benches, installed vertical gardens, and created an eco-friendly handwashing station. Across operations sites, the School Transformation Project saw volunteers revitalise schools through painting, tyre parks, eco-friendly handwashing stations, and vertical gardens — creating environments where students want to show up.
Volunteers painted educational wall art, refreshed playground structures, built recycled benches, installed vertical gardens, and created an eco-friendly handwashing station at government schools in Bengaluru and Hyderabad.Sustainability: 100,000 saplings and cleaner water bodies
A sapling plantation drive across fulfilment and delivery sites mobilised more than 40,000 Amazon employees, associates and delivery partners to plant over 100,000 saplings.
Project Blue enabled hundreds of Amazon employees to collect 300 kg+ of plastic waste through Transform A Lake and Transform A Beach initiatives in Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad. The lakes targeted—Chinnapanahalli in Bengaluru and Khajaguda Talab in Hyderabad—are surrounded by communities of daily wage labourers and fishing families whose health is directly affected by plastic pollution. Removing that waste isn't just an environmental act — it's a step towards healthier living conditions for more than 1,500 people in those neighbourhoods.
Health and hygiene: reaching 13,000 beneficiaries
Amazon's fulfilment centre network ran menstrual hygiene awareness campaigns — packing hygiene kits and conducting awareness sessions. At corporate sites, volunteers supported menstrual hygiene and new mother nutrition campaigns reaching 10,000 lives.
The people who made it happen
GMV runs on partnerships. This year, Amazon worked with organisations including Donatekart Foundation, Goodera, Being Jigyaasu, U&I, Way for Life, READ India, and SAAD Foundation.
"In four years of partnering with Amazon, we have gone from events with 20 volunteers to now having over 2,000 volunteers under one roof," says Shravani Kalkonda, Manager, CSR & Partnerships, Donatekart Foundation. "It's amazing to see many new faces, but with the same enthusiasm and energy every time."
The work continues
Global Month of Volunteering is the most visible expression of Amazon India's volunteering culture, but it isn't the only one. Throughout the year, Amazon employees and associates volunteer with community organisations, contribute professional skills through skill-based programmes, and mentor students through ongoing partnerships. What it does is concentrate that energy, create momentum, and set the tone for the months that follow.
The events may be over, but their impact continues to stay year long. Students are carrying forward new skills. Schools received infrastructure. Communities have cleaner water bodies. Nonprofit partnerships remain active. And the 70% of events that were employee-led this year signal something larger: a culture where volunteering isn't something Amazon asks people to do—it's something they choose to do, and then bring others along.
