We are a group of individuals working towards education for children from economically weaker sections. Our aim is to enable these students to access mainstream career opportunities successfully. We started in 2001, as an informal group volunteering with CRY and soon formalized our activities by registering a trust - Friends Of Children.
We have a strong focus on the girl child - with over 90% of our students being girls. Our endeavor has been to improve their scholastic performance along with overall personality development that makes way for financial independence. Till date, we have supported more than 150 students and actively mentor about 30 students at any given point of time.
We have raised funds through our personal contacts. Various organizations have helped us by supporting and enhancing our activities. We have income tax exemption under section 80G of the IT Act.
Our Team
Individuals from various professions, offer their time, towards management & implementation of our programmes. We have no employees - only volunteers drive the organization. Our volunteers execute all of our activities: from fundraising to home visits for student identification, from teaching and mentoring them to planning and managing activities and events.
Our team comprises Bhanu Kiran, Ravi, Vivek, Shrikanth, Prakash, Akash, Thriveni, Murtuza, Anil Birla, Anil Yekkala, Shantanu, Rohit, BG Srinivas, Sunil, PK Shrikanth, Archana...
Besides these, a few of our ex-students have returned as volunteers. This has been a major shot-in-the-arm for us.
Our Partners
A list of partner and sister organisations that have helped us in all that we have achieved.
St. Theresa School, Chamrajpet, Bangalore - Provides us with classrooms to run our weekend mentorship programmes.
Prerana - A group that sponsors higher education for meritorious students, supports us with access to library/computers/academic sessions for our students.
BASE /Giraffe academy - These tutorial institutions offer free admissions to some of our science students for their coaching classes for 2nd PUC and CET.
Synopsys - Has sponsored Disha, an intiative for popularizing science among students of Government High Schools. In recent times Synopsys CSR is also sharing execution responsiibilities
Oracle - Supports us with personality development classes for our students.
Friends of Children, Pune - A sister organisation, started by one of our old volunteer when he moved to Pune, with similar goals.
Dream School Foundation - A sister organization working towards the betterment of education in primary govt. schools.
