“You should realise that there is no greater and more sacred path to the Divine than service. It is a golden opportunity for you in this birth. You must realise the Omnipresent Divine through service.”

By His personal example, Baba has inspired a wave of community service programmes in India and around the world. Yet, these are not just humanitarian programmes to serve the poor and reduce suffering, tasks which are undertaken so admirably by NGOs around the world, they are acts of worship offered to God who resides in the heart of everyone.

Seva is a path of devotion that promotes mental purity, diminishes egoism, and enables one to experience the unity of mankind. The selfless sacrifice is essentially for our own sake – to transform our lives and redeem ourselves. It is for this reason that the seva done around the world in the name of Baba is done without publicity and expectation of personal reward.

In India, Baba launched the yearly Gram Seva to distribute food and basic necessities to villagers in and around Puttaparthi. Up to 2011, 300,000 villagers in 150 villages had been served. He also launched the Sathya Sai Village Integration Programme, which has eight main components, including employment, education, medical, social and spiritual care, to address the emotional toll that acute deprivation exacts. The work has extended to 1,300 villages.

The mammoth and unprecedented Sri Sathya Sai Drinking Water Supply Project, an initial project to supply fresh drinking water to over 1 million people in 730 villages in Anantapur, was inaugurated in 1995 by the President of India, Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma. In 2001 the project was launched in 2 districts in Andhra Pradesh. In April 2002, the Kandaleru-Poondi canal was overhauled to carry drinking water to the people of Chennai city. In May 2006, the Godavari drinking water project provided water to 500 villages.

Baba inspired a Disaster Relief and Management programme, which has responded to the Tsunami in Tamil Nadu, the Orissa floods and the earthquake in Sikkim.

Baba also inspired numerous substantial programmes around the world. For example:

• Sai Organisations in Africa, Indonesia, Laos and India have distributed mosquito nets with insecticide in malaria endemic areas, and in Kenya alone 85,000 nets have been distributed.
• The Sai Organisation in El Salvador completed a water project to provide safe drinking water to about 2,000 families, and in Indonesia 90 wells were built to supply water to 300 families in Gunung Kidul.
• Between January and August 2010, volunteers of the Sai Organisation provided medical treatment to 44,000 people and served 160,000 hot meals to Haitians after the massive earthquake.
• The Sai Organisations of Hong Kong, the Russian speaking countries and Slovenia distribute food to the homeless throughout the year.

By His own example, Baba has shown that there is sacredness only when there is selflessness and love for all living beings as embodiments of divinity. With this understanding, and with purity and noble intentions, our work can become offerings to God, and ultimately the work of God Himself.