Our Vision

December 19th, 2011

“Educate and Enable 10,000 first generation learners by 2020.”

Poverty is spread across the length and breadth of our country. We cannot make a big impact, unless we set up quality educational (mostly residential) centres for poor boys and girls in remote places and involve the local people in serving themselves. Hence, we dream of spreading our operation in at least 100 more places, with a total capacity of 10,000 students by 2020. We wish to achieve this by involving the local people, partnering with local NGOs by providing them financial, administrative and manpower support by employing quality teachers/supervisors along with involvement from our own members. Tapassya is run by the contribution of its members, who commit an annual membership fee along with some voluntary service in their free time. With the contribution from around 50 members, Tapassya is supporting nearly 70 students in three centres (as of 15th Sep, 2011). We believe,ALL OF US, as a team can make a HUGE impact to the society – may be by spending a few hours over the weekend in teaching, skipping a visit to restaurant/movie and contributing that amount etc.

Along with this model, we have a long term vision also to set up a campus consisting of orphanage, old age home, school and hospital, where our kids and old residents will help one another - the old people will teach the kids and the kids will give them the company. Due to improvement in healthcare system, an average Indian can work for at least 10 years post-retirement. We intend to utilize those years for people, who wish to give back to the society. We wish to have both formal and informal education system in our campus and will enable each student to earn a decent living and become a person-of-good-character, so that the chain reaction of supporting the poor can be sustained.We started with our philosophy of – “each one of us supporting ten poor students” and hope to spread this through our new members and some of the students, who will get educated through us. We strongly believe this chain reaction of supporting the needy students will help our poor citizens get educated and see the light of hope.
Why are we working towards this vision:

While 42% Indians live below International-Poverty-Line, 0.01% Indians make 33% of Gross-National-Income. These call for more direct involvement of individuals in reducing the economic and digital divide throughout the nation.

Swami Vivekananda said - “So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor, who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them. “

All of us in Tapassya, unanimously believe that we are fortunate to have got the better opportunities in life and it is our moral responsibility to give back to the society by standing beside the less advantaged and underprivileged sections of society. We believe it is just where a child is born alone that makes all the difference in his/her own life. In stead of leaving this at the hands of fate alone, if all of us can stand up and work together, we can secure the future of all the kids now and in future.
Of all things in the world, Why focus on education:

Education is the panacea of all evils. Swamiji said:

  • All the wealth of the world cannot help even a single village, if the people are not taught to help themselves India can never rise, until and unless the poor masses are once more well educated, well fed and well cared for. A nation is advanced in proportion as education and knowledge spread among the masses”

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  • “Education, education and eductaion alone. One thing at the root of all evils is the condition of the poor. The only service to be done for them is to give them education, to develop their lost individuality - give them ideas and they will work out their salvation.”

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    What benefit will the society at large get out of this:

    Swami Vivekananda said - “We want that education by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded and by which one can stand on one’s own feet”

    We wish to provide that education to the kids, through love and care, so that they can overcome the hatred showered upon them and their forefathers over centuries and bring back the confidence in them to stand up on their own feet. We wish to initiate the chain reaction to multiply our reach to the society. Just the same way, we the members of Tapassya and other organizations, are working towards this vision with our surplus money and time, we will teach these kids to also continue the same. Even if a certain percentage of these kids continue our vision, we can multiply our reach to the poor sections of our society manifold.

    Swamiji also said - “Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in Man”.We wish to educate the kids in line with this, which will make our society a much better place to live in, as otherwise, these kids, if left alone to grow up with empty stomach in the darkness of ignorance could have transformed to something else.

    Hence we formed our Tapassya - For a Better Tomorrow
    How do we plan to attain our Vision:

    Our Model:

    We believe, every man has infinite potential and the poor of our country have even more, for they have been fighting all the evils and deprivation of society for centuries with a happy face and a wide heart. We from Tapassya want to leverage this potential of some kind-hearted and energetic local people, who are already carrying out something, might be even in very small scale. We want to just ignite that spark (Tapassya Jyoti) through our financial, administrative support and our expertise, and thereby maximise the reach in each such locality, so that people can serve themselves better. This is replicable model, where we will continue till we can reach the maximum count of children to be supported from each such centre. When such a centre starts operating in a self-sustainable mode, we can shift some of our focus from there and replicate that for another centre.

    Does this Model really Work:

    We have seen it works and strongly believe it will work, When we started our relationship with Purbachal Ananda Ashram (www.pafngo.org) in 2008, we found that some 20 odd boys and girls were being brought up in utter poverty and unimaginable conditions. There was only one small concrete room, where the boys used to stay. The girls were put up in a small mud house with tin roof, which multiplied the heat and suffering in summer and had to be tied with ropes to hold back from being blown away in a storm. It brought tears to our eyes thinking how the little girls with their little hands used to sit with ropes tied to the roof on a stormy night. We started with a building named “Narayani Bhavan” as a proper home for those little girls, kept on bearing a part of the food expense of the Barjora centre, appointed a residential tutor cum house brother till date.
    The Barjora centre has not only been able to survive, it has grown a lot since then. Now they have got a separate property in Indas (Burdwan), where the boys have been shifted in a residential set up and the Barjora centre has got a grant of Rs 35 lacs from SAIL to expand further for girls. Now there are 46 kids in total. It is gradually moving towards a self-sustainable mode.
    But educating 10,000 kids - isn’t it a big dream considering the current scale of operation:

    Not at all. We are just a 50 member team now and supporting around 70 kids in different centres, Very soon we will be able to scale up more than a hundred with some capital investments on buildings to house them.

    We know that more than a lac of professionals work in different IT and ITES organizations. If we consider even 1 % of them joining us as a member, it means 1000 members. Going by current rate of annual contribution of Rs 10,000 per member, it become Rs 1 crore every year from member contribution alone. A committed earning of Rs 1 crore per year, along with some one-time investments from government/corporate houses, will certainly enable us reach even higher, we all strongly believe.