Organisation:
Donate an Hour (www.donateanhour.org)
Location:
Gurugram, Haryana
Problem:
There are many working people in India who want to volunteer for some social cause but unable to do so mainly because of two reasons, i.e. they don’t know how to help (other than monetary help) and whom to approach. To solve this issue, ‘Donate an Hour’ came up with an idea to be an intermediary platform between volunteers and beneficiaries. Ms. Meenakshi Singh realised that even after many years of Independence, education in India is still a challenge. Therefore, she decided to provide quality education to the underprivileged children. Donate an Hours asks for the most valuable thing from the volunteers which is not any kind of monetary help, but their valuable time for mentoring these underprivileged children.
Solution:
After working in many reputed companies, Ms. Meenakshi Singh founded ‘Donate an Hour’ with her husband for underprivileged children. It basically focuses on providing platform for volunteers to work for social cause near their place so that they can contribute fully to society’s development by teaching the children. This teaching includes subjects like English, Maths and Science, as these subjects are crucial for future of these children. This platform facilitates satisfaction of the needs of volunteers as well as beneficiaries i.e. children, volunteers get chance to actually work for social cause and the children can improve themselves with the help of mentoring.
Scalability and Impact:
Currently underprivileged residents (parents and children) in Gurgaon, Manesar and Nuh from 14 different locations are getting benefited by the work of Donate and Hour. In last 3.5 years they have proved that large scale social impact can be made by dedication and perseverance. Their strong social media presence ensures continuous inflow of volunteers to cover any shortfall/gap created due to volunteer’s movement due to career change or personal reasons. They want to replicate the same model to across India at least in major cities like Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata.
Financial Requirements:
Financial
Scaling up
Awards and Recognition:
Finalist in iVolunteer Awards 2016,
Recognized by Kalam Center for the work in child education,
Recognized by Dr Pranav Mukherjee Foundation for the work in Nuh.