Umang Foundation: 06/01/2012

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Distribution of Stationery Material among 9125 less fortunate students from 35 schools, entered into Limca Book of Records

Umang Foundation, a Mumbai based NGO has always believed education to be of paramount importance for the progress of the country. Every year Team Umang identifies schools with financially weak students and facilitates the supply of the stationery material needed for an academic year by them. This flagship project “Promote Education – ek kadam ujwal bhavishya ki aur” was launched in July 2008. With its belief and absolute commitment, Team Umang has been successful in reducing the volume of the dropouts of the students from these schools.

We are very happy that Team Umang’s hard work has been translated into results. Team Umang has not only progressively doubled the number of beneficiary students’ year on year since 2008, but also has witnessed reduced dropouts from school. This gives a sense of achievement and Team Umang only prays for this continued progress.

The primary focus of this project was to facilitate the requisite study materials to the students with weaker financial backgrounds. Team Umang had conducted a research prior to the project going live for year 2012 and had discovered that in the event they are able to provide the stationery required by these students it would significantly reduce the dropouts which the school(s) witnessed every year.

Hence, Team Umang decided to take up this task and this project has shaped up and moved to the next level from its infancy. Year on year, Team Umang’s endeavor was not only to identify more such deserving students but also work towards enhancing the participation of more such schools as beneficiaries so that through Promote Education – “ek kadam ujwal bhavishya ki aur”, it can dare to start the movement towards better literacy rate in India and the consequent progress of the country.

Since past four years, Team Umang has been dedicatedly working to the success of its flagship project. The following are the high level statistics of the progress of Team Umang since inception:

Year	No. of Beneficiary Students
Year 2008	550+
Year 2009	1,200+
Year 2010	2,050+
Year 2011	5,500+
Year 2012	11700+

This is the fifth consecutive academic year when Team Umang has again worked tirelessly for Promote Education. This year marked a milestone for Team Umang as it achieves its long-cherished dream of distributing the stationery kits to more than 9,000+ students from 31 different schools in a single day. This day created a historic moment as officials from the coveted Limca Book of Records witness this event live to record it as the largest ever distribution in this category in the history of country. With this Umang Foundation has entered in the Limca Book of Records – 2013 edition.

With this achievement under the belt, Team Umang’s focus would now shift to identify another remote area like Ulhasnagar, where team can identify more such students and schools that are having similar needs. This event is a significant stepping stone to Team’s ultimate goal of eradicating the drop-outs to near zero levels for all the primary and higher secondary students of these schools because of weak financial condition of families having background as daily wager, helper or home maid. Team Umang will continue to strive to achieve such milestones and multiply them year on year.