During these trying times, everybody is doing their bit to help the nation including our Bollywood celebrities. One such celebrity is YRF’s Aditya Chopra, who has decided to donate the entire budget of YRF 50 towards the COVID relief in India.
Yash Raj Films completed 50 glorious years in 2020. Aditya Chopra had grand plans to celebrate this incredible milestone for the company globally and had earmarked a big budget for these celebrations. However, with COVID-19’s second wave ravaging the country and shutting down the industry again, Aditya has decided to divert the entire YRF 50 celebration budget to aid the industry and its daily wage earners.
YRF is kickstarting a new initiative that will see their foundation provide cooked meals to thousands of frontline workers in Goregaon and also feed people at quarantine centers in Andheri from the YRF Studios kitchen. This is in addition to all the studio’s efforts that has already been undertaken for the Hindi film industry. Aditya launched the Yash Chopra Saathi Initiative last week which aims at providing financial support to thousands of film industry workers.
As part of the initiative, the Yash Raj foundation will oversee direct benefit transfers of Rs 5000 to women and senior citizens in the industry as well as distribute ration kits to workers for a family of four for one month through their NGO partner Youth Feed India.
Before this, YRF wrote to the Maharashtra Chief Minister asking if they could purchase vaccines for the 30000 registered workers of the film industry. YRF also said it would cover all expenses relating to workers getting the vaccine.
A veteran trade source reveals—
YRF will not be celebrating its 50th year even if things return to normalcy later as Aditya Chopra has decided to divert this entire fund for COVID relief work. He is clear that the funds need to be used on an urgent basis to restart the industry first as it has been hit the hardest because of the virus. There was an extensive blueprint of celebrations planned around the world which would have become massive news but all that stands canceled. Aditya Chopra only wants to concentrate on helping the industry and the fraternity that has been a support system to YRF for the last 50 years too.
Kudos to YRF!