December 29, 2008 
Uncategorized 
IIMC student Tharun Sholarajan’s NGO “Ray of Hope” was recently featured in The Week magazine titled “The Indian Genius” – “Simple local solutions change lives across the nation.” This is the article in its entirety.
THE WEEK DEC 28th 2008
Ray of Hope, Hyderabad
In 2005, when Praneeth Pallepogu stepped into Shishu Vihar, Hyderabad for the first time to distribute blankets to orphan children and destitute women, he realised that he had to do much more.He discussed it with his mother, Noorjehan, a government employee, and then formed a team with the help of his friends. ” We contacted many of our old friends, some of them in the US, and got a huge response. They were all enthusiastic, and they raised funds from others as well. Thus the network started spanning new horizons”, says Praneeth.“Our initial plan was a short-term campaign”, he says. “We took photographs of the Shishu Vihar inmates and mailed them to our benefactors”. They did this just to thank the donors. Their friends were so overwhelmed by the photographs that they spread word about the good work and raised more funds. Thus was born the little group named Ray of Hope. The funds were invested in institutions like Devnar Blind School and Ashray Akruti School for the Hearing Impaired, both in Hyderabad. Praneeth was also instrumental in sponsoring the education for the poor children in a village near IIT Kanpur where he was doing his management studies.The Good Samaritan Home for orphans in Pocharam Near Hyderabad/Secunderabad, which was in a miserable shape, is a much better place thanks to Ray of Hope. The group plans to build a school for its inmated.praneeth and his friend Naresh feel their strength is their network, and are convinced that collective and consistent help can change anything.Apart from networking, they use innovative methods to raise funds. When Praneeth landed a job at Infosys, his parents hosted a party. His friends and he surprised the guests with a 10-minute Power Point Presentation on their activities.At the end of the party, Ray of Hope was richer by Rs.600000
This is Tharun’s story behind Ray of Hope
“Ray of Hope” was initiated as a charity organization at Hyderabad by best friends Praneeth and me, Tharun Sholarajan on November 21st 2005. In the next 10 days, 6 other close friends from engineering joined us. From a short-term campaign, we’ve grown into a 620 strong organization that has given constant support to over 2300 underprivileged and has spread across 10 major cities in India and 4 the USA.Our aim is to integrate forces such as NGO’s, the Govt., Corporate world, etc, with the aim to reach out to the poorest of the poor, those who’ve never been cared for before; and raise them to a self sustainable level.
Since resources such as time, money, people, etc, are limited, we’ve taken a conscious decision to reach out to the most underprivileged. We arrived at this decision after visiting Devnar Blind School at Hyderabad where we were sympathetic to the cause of the children but these children have a steady source of heavy funding from political parties and media coverage.
So we felt that it’s not fair that someone else out there in some corner of the world doesn’t have 3 walls and a ceiling and 3 square meals a day. Hence in our research, we came across Pocharam Village and our first visit was overwhelming as we were both sad and happy; sad due to the horrible condition of the village and happy due to the opportunity to transform the village; and hence adopted the village.
From the village’s first ever water supply to constant educational support to the children there to the construction of Housing, Schooling, Medical and Recreational facilities for over 200 children, 3 years hence we’ve been instrumental in transforming the village.
We’ve been recognized by the Govt. of Andhra Pradesh for Outstanding Social Work. Our latest accomplishment is a COVER PAGE article about us “˜The Week’ magazine’s Anniversary Special Edition (December 28th 2008, page 96, 97, 98) in the section “Youth- Spurring Change” which speaks about how today’s youth is changing the world. Our story was chosen from among 5 other major NGOs.
We’ve also been invited by IIT Kanpur to deliver Guest lectures on entrepreneurship and personality development to the MBA students. IIT Kanpur’s MBA course will soon be incorporating
‘Ray of Hope…’ as a case study on entrepreneurship. A Vocational training centre by the name “Ray of Hope ” will be opened at IIT Kanpur for underprivileged children.
We do have clear goals and one of those is to diversify due to various opportunities that exist to transform the underprivileged society. It surely is difficult but with the concept of a “˜Hope Center’, we believe it is possible to incorporate various streams of the society’s issues into our curriculum.
We’ve joined forces with various other NGOs, the corporate world, the IITs, IIMs and various other bodies and plan to transform many more villages, slums, etc through a properly thought out strategy. This includes education, performance based support (for example you don’t study well, you lose our support!), rural employment schemes, etc.
Please visit www.rayofhope.in to join us.
For Jokatimes
Abhishek Nagaraj
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