Fund Facts

Dr. Anuradha Rajput with Adarsha and Apoorva at the 2009 International Eco Hero Awards Reception on October 24, 2009.



Hello Blog Followers,

This is Apoorva Rangan. I thought of addressing the fund raising issues in this post in response to several comments and questions. First of all, I am very happy to inform you all that we have been successful in fulfilling the financial obligation of $15,000 towards the phase I and II of our project. I would like to take this opportunity to thank two very important people from our advisory committee for our success. First of all, Mrs. Michelle Lacourciere, executive director of Sirona Cares foundation, sponsored our project to attain a nonprofit status. This was a big deal for us. We could not have done this by ourselves, because we learned that the annual operating cost of a nonprofit organization itself is very expensive. As Sirona Cares foundation handles that for us, any funds we collect directly goes into our project. Though this is remarkable, Sirona Cares is not financially sponsoring our project. We need to come up with the funds on our own. With the current global recession, fund raising has been one of our main challenges.

As I am the cofounder of the project, and took the financial Director’s role from day one, I know how we have come up with every single penny! Ours is a unique project with a unique approach to fund collections. This is where Dr. Anuradha Rajput’s role comes in. She has been our financial anchor in India, in addition to being a member in our advisory committee. We started the project with a total sum of $650, which was the cash prize Adarsha won in the CA State spelling championship in 2006. By October 2009, we have roughly $15,000. Pretty impressive right? Firstly, Dr. Rajput guided us in the right direction. She researched the available awards in the environmental service area and nominated us. The first award that we won as a team was the 2009 T4PE Gold service award. The team (Adarsha, Callie and I) won $1000 together and we all contributed the entire cash prize towards the project. Next, she nominated Adarsha and me for The International Eco Hero award 2009, and the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes 2009 for which we both won a total of $500 and $2500 respectively. Adarsha and I donated that entirely towards project Jatropha. Very recently Adarsha won the Brower Youth Award 2009. He received a cash prize of $3000 which he contributed towards the project. So far, we have collected $7000 from the awards alone. We want to thank Dr. Adrianna Smyth for nominating Adarsha for Brower Youth Award. In addition, Adarsha also donated his annual earnings of $1200, and adding the $650 of his earlier contribution so far makes our total to $8850. I collected the rest of the $6150 from the generous donors in India introduced by Dr. Rajput. We’d also like to thank to our family and friends for their contributions toward our project. This is a short summary of our fund raising tactics.

Lately Callie and I have been exploring other fund raising opportunities. Callie suggested that we do a bracelet sale in the local schools! Not any bracelet, but ones that are popular in our project site. These are the colorful glass bangles that the rural women wear. I took Callie’s suggestion and contacted Dr. Rajput for help again. Luckily, she was visiting CA in October. She lives in Bangalore which is 120 miles away from the project site. As we needed the bulk supply, she took the help of 10 of the workers to find 200 bangles from 12 different shops. She packed them carefully and delivered them to us three weeks ago. Next step is to make the sale. We will let you know how this plan works out soon. Wish us good luck!

Here's a glimpse of the bangles!

~Apoorva