Scholarship Program

We provide scholarships to underprivileged children to complete their entire education and guide them to become respectable as well as contributing members of society.

Overview

For the tens of millions of underprivileged children in India, completing their education is still a distant dream. Although many of these kids go to government backed schools, some either drop out after high school due to lack of financial resources or the quality of education is so dismal that they find themselves lost in the new India. Quite a few of them also have a strained family background and face sustained abuse. These children can at the most hope for a menial job in the future that is only enough to get by on a daily basis.

Such a scenario has created multiple problems in our society. Firstly with a growing population of over a billion people, the pressure on our country is enormous. Every year the numbers of kids in need are only going up and unfortunately many of them end up in anti-social activities. For some kids who genuinely wanted to learn and dreamt of leading a life of dignity, there is a lot of frustration and anger at their circumstances.

Now imagine if these deserving kids were provided both financial and emotional support to complete a quality education and stay on the right path to achieve their dreams. They could not only create a decent life for themselves, they would be able to eventually move out from their slums or chawls and move their families as well. These same individuals would have gratitude in them and start helping other children in need just like they were helped in the past and this cycle would finally help genuinely uplift our society.

This is where Shona Seva Foundation comes in. We find underprivileged children that truly want to learn and dream of a quality education and provide them with scholarships. Some children are also offered our mentorship program to ensure they shape into considerate, socially conscious human beings who are a blessing to society.

The scholarships as well as mentorship programs are meant to help these children complete their entire education from high school to post-graduation. We ensure that the scholarship funds are genuinely used for education purposes only and have strict guidelines on how and when the money is distributed to each qualified child.

How Students Are Identified

Apart from our own word of mouth activities, we rely on the following to search and identify potential candidates for our scholarship program:

  • NGOs: We partner with other NGOs who are already in touch with students from schools as well as colleges across India and rely on them to suggest students in need of scholarships.
  • Teachers: We are building a network of teachers who can alert us on students in danger of dropping out due to financial reasons. At the moment, we are looking to partner with teachers in rural India as they are already in touch with students and know the education environment well.
  • Individuals and Well-wishers: We also take feedback and suggestions from individuals and well-wishers who know students from underprivileged backgrounds in need of scholarships to continue their education.

Eligibility Criteria

The eligibility criteria for our scholarship program is as follows:

  • Nature of the child.
  • Financial background of the family.
  • 10th pass as our scholarships are meant for higher education.
  • Intent of the child.
  • Genuine interest in learning and completing their education.

We never look at the current academic performance or intelligence of the student. Our goal is always to help deserving, good natured children who genuinely want to complete their education and show intent in learning further.

Conclusion

We hope with our scholarship program, we are able to provide a chance to a student to genuinely succeed in life and help not just transform a life, but our society as well.