StepsStone presents ‘Heros of Chennai 2018’ Chennai’s most clean & credible award platform on 25^th November 2018 at Feathers Hotel from 6.00 pm onwards in the presence of RJ Balaji – Actor / Social Activist, Vikram Cotah – COO, GRT Hotels & Resorts, Chef Damu – Guiness World Record holding Chef and Latha Pandiarajan – Co- Founder  - Ma Foi Group.

Heroes of Chennai is an initiative by DreamCraft Events to celebrate this wonderful city by honoring and recognizing people and organizations that have inspired and created a powerful impact in their field of work and have defined what is the Spirit of Chennai.

Some of the categories awarded were Hero of Chennai, Sports award and Para sports awards, Social Service Icon award, Public Service award, Film with a Social Impact, Corporate Social Responsibility Award and many more.

The audiences were also entertained by performances from Ganesh Vandana and Poizen Dance Toupe and Sarath & Team.

The award function also saw the launch of Change 123. This is joint initiative by Heros of Chennai awards, Maatram Foundation and DreamCraft events. This will be the social initiative for the year by the Heroes of Chennai Awards platform.

This is a unique initiative by Maatram Foundation through which free higher education is given to deserving students from economically deprived background. Various educational institutions partnered with the Foundation give free admissions which included not just the tuition fees but also the transportation charges, hostel fees (wherever applicable), food expenses, books & stationery expenses. Students who had scored more than 80% but cannot afford to buy even an engineering application form are identified and given quality education.The entire activity is done by a robust process of collecting data, verifying the same through volunteers, having a face to face interview and finally short listing candidates for various educational institutions.

The highlight of this project is that the identity of the beneficiaries is kept confidential. The purpose of this initiative to encourage deserving candidates to study further and utilize their potentials to the best of their ability and the burden of being identified as a beneficiary where their economic status is projected each time can be humiliating for the students.

Apart from admitting the students into various Engineering colleges, the students are also trained on various soft skills and employability skills making them industry ready.

Till date, 677 students have benefitted from Maartam Foundation's work.

To spread awareness and involve the citizens of Chennai to identify deserving candidates, a video campaign will be launched in the coming months with the winners of Heroes of Chennai Awards 2018 to create vitality via social media and Facebook.