AKANSHA NGO 1. How did you come up with Akansha as name? Akansha is running from last 23 years.

And it was started by Shaheen Mistry when she was student in saint Xaviers. There first centre was started in holywell school. She started teaching childrens which are not in school. She fell that time that English will be a global language. So childernes have to learn, they have to know English for this she started after the school centre in which the students who are studying in Marathi medium, hindi medium or urdu medium or etc. come at akansha centre where in two hours English maths, and self-esteem was taught. So they have 30 to 40 centres in Mumbai and same in pune also. Over the years they realised that working for 2 hours is not enough for children. They fell that kids were studying in schools so they need longer period with them thats why they got in to the school project. This school project is public private policy under that they are in government schools. They have 15 schools across Pune and Mumbai and they have adopted government BMC schools and they are running it. 2. What message does Akansha pass to the society? Basically they feel that all children should learn thats the biggest massage is this. And they want to give equal opportunities to these children. 3. What is your goal and how far have you reached attaining the your goal? Goal of their schools is that students should ingrain them values and education that will impact the community and they will be proactive member. 4. What are the promotional activities of Akansha and the advertisement mediums? In promotion activity they invite volunteers, and share similar ideas. And they take the school outside and allow outside person to teach their students. For example this year MTY channel people come in school and they taught media to the children. They have facebook page and their own website to promote. 5. How do you motivate your volunteers to work with you? They have selection criteria of selecting volunteers are like they look for good English, maths, history and geography knowledge. And they ask people why they want to come in this, is there any passion. But now days many students are coming because they have compulsion to do. 6. Do you have plans to diversify and expand to other areas like orphanage/medical facilities or to other geographical areas? The plan is to make this a replicable model. We can tell others that this is our model and this can happen. And we do not have plans to get into orphanage or other such areas. We want to reach out to Government schools. And also we are very quality conscious. But yes we do want to geographically expand. We want to be in 35 schools in Mumbai.

7. How do you receive aid from government/ political parties/ corporate? No we do not get any help from Government. We are a very apolitical organisation. We do not get anything from the Govt. apart from the kids on the road, the infrastructure, the mid-day meals all this is done by Govt. But the entire education thing is ours. 8. Do you have any kind of association or tie-ups with other NGOs like an orphanage? No 9. How much funds do you get to run your NGO? They need 1 crore to run this school for a year which is the budget.

10. What are the sources of getting funds? My school is funded by MSDFC (Dell Foundation). They are funding most of the schools in Mumbai. In Pune all the schools are funded by Thermaxs Initiative. And also we have HDFC and other individuals also.