Education

Academic Excellence Awards

Objective

The objective of this program is to help exceptionally talented but less privileged students from rural areas to enable them to maximize their full potential and change their lives, their family's lives, their villages and the society. There are thousands of talented students from the less-privileged segments of the society, particularly from the rural areas who are deprived of good higher education due to lack of financial support and guidance. Our objective is to help these exceptionally talented but poor students to become doctors, engineers, computer scientists, administrators and senior executives. The rationale is simple. Given the level of tuition and other fees in professional colleges, the poor students have no chance today to pursue their dreams of becoming engineers, doctors, computer scientists, administrators and senior executives. These students cannot get educational loans also from banks either, given the financial conditions of their parents. However, the earning potential of these professions are very high. They can earn enough lifting the whole family out of the poverty trap. The student also becomes a role model in his village and in his community inspiring others to pursue this path. In other words, the multiplier effect on the society of enabling a talented child to become a high income earning professional is huge. By a conservative estimate, each rupee invested in a talented child returns 140x to the society.

Our Program is unique in one way

- it is self-sustaining. Each award recipient from our program has to makes a pledge to support at least two more students once he/she has the capacity to do so. This pledge provides a built in mechanism for the future sustainability of the program. Unlike most other charities where the flow of money is always one way, our model ensures that the current scholars go on to become future donors.

We expect each of our student to:

• Successfully complete the higher education in professional courses from good colleges and universities
• Have a deep sense of self-esteem
• Grow into responsible citizens with a deep sense of commitment to Society
• Become the torchbearers and transformations agents for the millions of poor students and the future
  generations in India

We encourage and empower all our students to dream and realize their dreams. This award is just a token of our appreciation for students from rural areas who secure excellence in academics despite all hardships.

Methodology

The entire process of selection of the recipients will be absolutely transparent. The applications will be invited by advertisements in the local media. All the applications received will be scrutinized by a panel of Award Program Facilitators based upon mainly the below criterion :
1. Academic Performance in grade 10 or grade 12 Board Examination and national or state level entrance
    examinations for professional courses.
2. Family Income
3. The dedication and determination of the student to pursue professional courses.

The Foundation will every year identify the top few performers for this award from Aurangabad and Jalna districts who score the highest marks.