Abhishek Kattuparambil and Rishi Arjun, have teamed up with six high tech companies to help aid homeless children in the area.

Kattuparambil, a junior at Cupertino-based Homestead High School, and Arjun, a junior at BASIS Independent Silicon Valley school in San Jose, learned that around one in 30 kids throughout the Bay Area would face homelessness throughout the year, leading to the teens starting an outreach program and partnering with San Francisco nonprofit Project Night Night.

The nonprofit provides free ‘Night Night Packages’ to homeless children from birth to pre-teen with childhood essentials to have a concrete and predictable source of security and increased exposure to high-quality literacy materials, according to a news release.

Kattuparambil and Arjun, both passionate cricketers, teamed with Project Night Night to establish Cricket for a Cause, connecting the game with the nonprofit.

The first of such events took place March 31 and April 1 with teams from Amazon, Hortonworks, Infosys, Oracle, PwC and TechMahindra taking part.

The event, won by the Amazon team, raised funds for the nonprofit. Sixty percent of the funds went to Project Night Night. All the teams signed tote bags and those were delivered to the Casa de Clara Shelter in San Jose.

“We are honored that Cricket-for-a-Cause has selected us to benefit from their generosity,” Kendra Robins, founder and executive director of Project Night Night, said in a statement. “We are delighted that through sport, athletics and camaraderie, Cricket-for-a-Cause will make an impact on homeless children in the community. Cricket-for-a-Cause's philanthropy initiative will help us provide our Night Night Packages to more than 25,000 homeless children this year. Further, by introducing

Project Night Night charitable work to the cricket community, it puts everyone involved a win-win situation.”

|