Our vision & strategy

We believe that poverty, crime, human rights abuse, political and even large scale global crisis, all can be attributed to lack of education which is the fundamental factor behind all under-development and social problems. We also believe that only a few special individuals have the innate intellectual capacity, tenacity and drive to drastically improve their own standing and also develop the community if they get a little help from others.

We want these individuals to be future role models in their communities for others to follow. We incorporated this trust to provide financial support, encouragement and role models to these individuals at the right time in their life. With help of school teachers we identify the needy school students that are most likely to become accomplished individuals. We provide tuition fees and costs of books to these selected students. We identify promising students who are most likely to continue education beyond primary school, be successful and thereby provide maximum return to the society and most satisfaction to the benefactors. In Indian context this critical time is when a child is stepping into adolescence and when he or she is likely to drop out of school to earn his livelihood due to the economic necessity. We try to step in at that critical moment. We provide scholarship to support his/her education so that his/her family do not feel the economic burden and allow him/her to continue studying. Our other goal is to provide encouragement to the student and at the same time create an example out of him/her for other neighborhood youngsters to follow.

 

Why we chose education ?

Education of a promising youngster gives the highest return on any money spent in the development sector. Rural and semi-urban areas in India are the most under-developed locales inhabited by the poorest section of population. A public sector (government) employment for a family member is often the only way that a needy family can move up the socio-economic ladder and be self sufficient. A college degree and being able to qualify in the written selection tests are pre-requisites for getting such coveted public sector employments. This means that an young adult from the family needs to continue education till college. Thus, if we support a child's education we can help the family to escape poverty. We choose this intervention stategy also because small donations are best suited to support education of an individual child and donors can best relate to this cause.

 

How we select students to support ?

We have contacts with the rural schools in poor areas of West Bengal. We asked he head masters/mistress of those schools to nominate a few needy but promising students. Our criteria for selecting students are the followings:

1) The child should be doing well academically (we check the records and get references from the school's head master/mistress). A child who is bright and intelligent is more likely to become successful and satisfy the donors.

2) The head master/mistress of the school should know the family well and the child's parents should be genuinely interested in letting the child continue with studies.

3) We target those border line families who are not so poor to starve, and yet not so well off to support education by themselves. This ensures that the child is allowed to continue with studies.

4) Finally the school head master/ mistress should be willing to supervise and collect the scholarship money from our local office, and use it for books and tuition fees for the child. We ensure that the head master / mistress is well known, respected individual in the community who has influence over the family and the child.