Chennai students raise ₹40 Lakh for education of underprivileged

CHENNAI: More than 110 students of Sishya School in Chennai have raised close to ₹40 lakh to support the living and education costs of rural underprivileged children, thanks to a crowdfunding campaign on Fueladream.com.
Launched on October 1 with a goal to raise ₹23.20 lakh (116 students raising ₹20,000 each), the campaign has collected ₹39.46 lakh from more than 900 donors across 180 cities already, with nine days still remaining.The top four students raised ₹4.9 lakh, ₹3.7 lakh, ₹2 lakh and ₹1.7 lakh respectively, with 65 students gone past the ₹20,000 goal.
In partnership with the Rotary Club of Madras, the initiative titled ‘Kids for Kids’ aims to support orphans and children from economically stressed families at a 34-acre campus called Boys Town at Amarambedu village in Gummidipoondi. While the target amount could meet expenses of 116 children for a whole year, the total amount raised can now support close to 105 students for almost two years. Ranjit Pratap, president, Rotary Club of Madras said the initiative was a win-win situation as it imbibed values of helping the needy in urban students and helped make the world a better place.
Fueladream.com founder Ranganath Thota considers crowdfunding to be a life skill and the specific initiative to be “the largest student-led” crowdfunding campaign. “It’s a marriage of storytelling, technology and social media,” said Thotta, noting that students learn about emerging technologies, and also create social impact in the process.
Shreya Reddy, a Class XI student, who has raised ₹4.9 lakh said she did not know much about crowdfunding before this campaign, and ₹20,000 seemed like a big target. However, capitalizing on her social media presence across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and other platforms, Reddy managed to overshoot her target with some help from friends and family.
“I want to do this every year,,” she said.