About Asha for Education

Asha for Education is a 100% volunteer-based, zero-overhead, non-profit, secular organization dedicated to supporting socio-economic changes in India by focusing on basic education with a belief that education is a critical requisite for such changes. The objectives of this group include providing education to underprivileged children in India and to address, whenever possible, other issues affecting human life such as health care, environment, housing, and women's issues. Asha’s efforts are supported by funds raised through donations and fundraising events around the year, which the group organizes itself.

Asha was founded in the summer of 1991 at the University of California in Berkeley by a few students who got together to think of ways in which they could play a role in the development of India, the country of their origin. The group was named Asha to represent the hope that had brought these individuals together and the hope that they aimed to bring into the lives of several children in India.

The relevance of Asha today

India today is a country of two radically different faces – one that is characterized by an economy that is expanding at a break-neck speed with foreign investments pouring in from all directions and the other that is characterized by a large portion of the population living on less than $1 a day and unable to take advantage of this growth, primarily due to lack of skills and education.

To address this wide disparity, Asha’s work of educating under-privileged children and expediting change from bottom-up to bridge the divide between the haves and the have-nots is relevant now than ever before. Asha's focus on children's education has galvanized a number of volunteers across the globe. Today, there are over 66 Asha chapters worldwide: 45 in the US, 14 in India and 7 in Europe, Singapore and Australia. Volunteers in each of these chapters take personal interest in identifying education-related projects in India, and supporting them by raising funds and through other means.

In the future, Asha hopes to continue playing an important role in the socio-economic development of India. Asha's vision is to have at least one project in every district of India by 2010.

Fundraising at Asha

Asha, as an organization, relies on its donors and funds raised through events to support all the projects. All chapters have significant autonomy to drive their fundraising initiatives and identify and approve projects for funds disbursement.

A rigorous evaluation process is followed to approve projects for funds disbursement including assessing the viability of the project, the impact the project will have on the local community, and an in-person visit to the proposed site of the project.

About Asha, NYC/NJ Chapter

Since its inception in 1994, the NYC/NJ chapter has been an integral part of Asha for Education and one of its highest fundraisers. The chapter boasts of over 40 active volunteers who come from numerous backgrounds – financial services, engineering, medicine, arts, and academia. Volunteers are full-time professionals in global conglomerates such as Accenture, American Express, Bloomberg, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and T-Mobile to name a few. The NYC/NJ chapter has raised and disbursed over $1 million in funds since 1994.

This year, for the first time in the history of Asha globally, the NYC/NJ chapter is organizing a dinner gala at the Waldorf Astoria on May 19th, 2007. The chapter is proud to host Mr. S. Gopalakrishnan, co-founder and COO of Infosys Technologies as the Guest of Honor and P. Sainath, award-winning author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought and journalist of The Hindu as the special guest speaker. The evening will be hosted by renowned comedian Dan Nainan. For more details about the event and to purchase tickets, please visit http://ashanet.org/nycnj/gala/.

Projects at Asha, NYC/NJ

Some of the projects supported by the NYC/NJ chapter include –

Namgyal Institute for People with Disability in Ladakh, Kashmir that works within the governmental school system to allow students with disabilities to participate in education. The program focuses on identifying children with disabilities, working with schools and training teachers to accommodate these students, and reaching out to the community as a whole to get support for their activities.

Door Step School (School on Wheels) in Mumbai, Maharastra, a registered non-profit organization that conducts non-formal education classes for out of school and working children (7 to 18 years of age) residing in slums, on pavements, docks etc. Asha for Education supports Door steps "School on Wheels" bus, which makes basic education easily accessible to a larger number of children.

Sankurathri - Based just outside of Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh, Sankurathri was founded as a model school that has changed the way the community viewed education. In contrast to the other schools in the area, Sarada Vidyalayam demands strict discipline and sets high academic standards. Every single student who has entered Sankurathri school has successfully completed 7th grade and passed the state exam with first class. Asha for Education recently launched an Asha Stars program to support teacher's salaries of the school.

Chintan in New Delhi that runs education programs for children from the waste picking communities who do not have any formal education. Chintan targets children between the ages of 8 and 14 and helps provide them with "bridge classes" to prepare them for joining regular schools, support classes for children attending regular schools, and Bal panchayats (governing bodies) to help build self confidence among these children. Asha's grants will be used to provide books and basic stationery to children, and provide salaries to teachers and community workers.

For more information on all other projects or Asha, please visit http://ashanet.org/nycnj/ or email asha.nycnj@gmail.com.

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