Reach for the Stars
Reach for the Stars is a project to finance the higher education of young people from the villages surrounding Auroville, Tamil Nadu, South India.
The support and funding we receive enable motivated and able young men and women from poor and difficult backgrounds to achieve their educational potential through college/university education. Using the experience of NGOs we impose very clear and firm conditions on those we support. Students must cooperate fully with our team members who observe and monitor their academic and other progress and on that basis advise them.
Executive's Name: Mukta Martens
Apart from financial support, the development of individual talents and community values spur the growth of students towards positive role models who transform their own lives and inspire others to dream of and go for higher education as a way to build better lives. This is fundamental to our work. On the whole the students take their social responsibility as sources of inspiration seriously.
Number of Beneficiaries- 92 Since Foundation
Size of the team : 10 Aurovilians, 1 non Aurovilian
Date of foundation: Nov. 2010
Reach for the Stars encourages the growth and development of a unified, proactive group of young people across villages, to impact long term community strengthening through enhancement of personal capacity building. We have regular classes in English and Hindi, Aikido for girls, Chess classes, ecological programs in Sadhana Forest, bi-monthly meetings and workshops by the students and excursion trips. Six of our students now build a strong support team and take up 50 % of our administration work. Students fully understand that if they break the conditions of their funding or fail a course we are likely to terminate our assistance to them. Those relatively advantaged in life have a duty, we believe, to help those less fortunate. Each student gives an undertaking that they will, on completion of studies and when earning, pay back 20% of what they received from us. Our longer-term hope, however, is that each will do more and ultimately fund the education of at least one other student.
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