Varsha Praveen's fundraiser for Vibha Striders

Fundraising for Vibha Striders 2024

"Seriously, you joined a half-marathon training program?

" Why are you doing this, it sounds painful, will you be able to do this with all your aches and pains?"

" You are not used to this much physical activity and this seems so unlike you. "

These are the reactions I got from some friends and family when they got to know that I joined this program. Yes, this is definitely out of my comfort zone. However, I am pushing myself through this program not only to improve my stamina and well-being but because the cause is dear to my heart. As many of you know, for the last 1 year I have been working as an intervention teacher in a school in Alum Rock district, San Jose, where most of the kids come from low-income families. I see daily the kind of challenges these kids face and how it affects their academic success. They face so many struggles that even prevent them from coming to school regularly. All this despite having such good infrastructure and programs here that are provided free of cost to them. Compared to that, low-income families and children in India have hardly any support. I felt that even though I am not able to physically go and teach kids in India I can support a wonderful organization like Vibha by helping to raise funds. The amazing work they are doing to improve education for underprivileged communities in India is a tremendously worthy cause. 

Below are a couple of the programs and organizations that Vibha runs and supports in India that inspired and motivated me to do this fundraiser.

Samavesh Urban Project:

Many of the government school teachers are not well trained nor do they have the required tools and infrastructure to teach their students which results in improper imparting of education and inadequate learning by the students. This project enhances the capability of teachers by conducting training for them in activity-based learning that can be implemented in classroom teaching. It is presently being conducted in 82 schools in Madhya Pradesh.

Vibha-Akshara Partnership

The National Education Policy 2019 points out that 50 million children, currently in elementary school, are unable to read, write or do basic addition and subtraction. If action is not taken in the next few years, we could lose 100 million students from the education system. Ganitha Kalika Andolana (GKA), is a multi-stakeholder initiative to improve mathematics learning outcomes of India’s government school system. Started as a large-scale adoption by the Karnataka State Government in 2014 and since then has expanded to Odisha and Andhra Pradesh impacting over 4 million children in grades 1-5.

Vibha is committed to bringing together both the public and private sectors to strengthen infrastructure and provide mechanisms for sustainable access to education. Through Vibha's model of seed, scale, and growth, our projects, as an example, have helped expand public education programs from 15 to 43,000 schools in one state in India. As a result, this success has now become the template to expand to other states.

We believe molding young minds will give them the freedom to choose a better life. 

Every dollar we raise is another massive step to help these kids achieve their dreams.

Do check out www.vibha.org to learn about all the wonderful projects they support.

Please support my efforts to raise money for this amazing organization. Every dollar counts and will be greatly appreciated.

Vibha is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with a vision to ensure that every child attains his or her right to quality public education. Our mission is to enable scalable solutions to drive excellence in the quality of public education. Vibha uses Seed, Scale, and Grow model to ensure that a ‘scalable, sustainable and replicable’ end result is achievable and continue to extend the reach of our solutions with quick turnaround time. One of our core principles is to ensure that every project makes optimal use of the resources and funds available, to develop a community centered on innovative thinking.

About Vibha

Vibha's vision is to ensure every underprivileged attains quality education. Vibha educates, enables and empowers, individuals who wish to make a positive impact on the lives of underprivileged children. Since our inception in 1991, Vibha has supported more than 250 projects in India and 10 projects in the US. As a result, Vibha has been able to reach out to and provide opportunities for over 2.3 million underprivileged children. Currently, Vibha supports 15 projects in India and 3 projects in the US.

All donations to Vibha are tax deductible. Vibha is a 501(c)(3) organization, registered in the USA in the State of New Jersey. Vibha's Tax ID is 22-3122761.