Page 52 - Education World November 2022

Cover Story

scholarships, expand and regularly
renovate on-campus academic, co-
curricular and sports infrastructure.
However despite repeated emails
and telephone calls, principals of the
said schools declined to share their
fundraising strategies and experience
with EducationWorld and the educa-
tors’ community. Such self-centred-
ness presumably born out of unwar-
ranted insecurity, is deplorable and
not in the national interest.
B UT ALTHOUGH unwarrant-

ed secrecy and reluctance
to share best practices is
pervasive in Indian educa-
tion, there are exceptions. S a n g ita
C h i m a , an alumna of Andhra and
Annamalai universities and currently PHF founder trustee Shukla Bose: philanthropy & charity distinction
principal of the superbly furbished
Amity International School, Dubai, F ou n da tion (PHF, regstd. 2003), is and state government laws. Unfortu-
chalked up a good fundraising re- another highly skilled fundraiser. nately, despite our good track record
cord at the vintage Lawrence School, Since the foundation established of thoroughly educating our children
Lovedale (LSL, estb. 1858) where she its first free-of-charge primary school and placing them in blue-chip compa-
served a five-year term as principal for slum children in Bengaluru two nies, we haven’t succeeded in building
(2012-17). decades ago, the number of Parikrma an endowment corpus. This requires
“During my term as principal at K-10 English-medium schools affili- large-scale American style philanthro-
LSL, we steadily built up the school’s ated with the Karnataka state exami- py. Regrettably, most people in India
endowment corpus which is currently nations board has grown to four with don’t make the distinction between
estimated at Rs.10 crore. However, an aggregate enrolment of 2,000 chil- philanthropy and charity. Philanthro-
the management draws upon it only dren mentored by 238 teachers. More- pists invest in socio-economic devel-
for emergency pay-outs. Funding for over PHF has also established a junior opment, whereas charitably inclined
specific projects including curriculum (higher secondary) college and teach- people invest for personal salvation
enrichment and professional develop- er training centre which has upskilled in feel-good causes. School teachers
ment programmes is raised by way of 2,300 government school teachers. and leaders should teach children to
alumni contributions. LSL maintains The foundation raises a substantial become philanthropy-minded from
meticulous batch-wise alumni re- sum of Rs.14 crore per year to fund early years and advise them that if
cords. Every year, a new projects and its operational expenses from over 65 they can’t give money, they should
initiatives wish-list is circulated to all committed corporate and other do- give their time for community devel-
alumni batches and invariably one or nors, but hasn’t yet built an endow- opment projects,” says Bose.
more batches collect funding for spe- ment corpus. The silver lining of the widening
cific projects and send it to the school “Although we are fortunate to have gap between rich and poor in post-
for project execution. When I was a large number of corporate donors liberalisation Indian society — inevi-
principal at LSL, we raised Rs.10 crore who fund us under the CSR (corporate table for a country that belatedly took
to completely upgrade our cricket pa- social responsibility) mandate of the the capitalist road in the new millen-
vilion and football grounds,” recalls Central government, as also a substan- nium — is that a rising wave of philan-
Chima. tial number of generous foundations thropic impulse is sweeping across the
An alumna of Jadavpur University, and individual patrons, our annual country. The sustained propaganda
Kolkata and IIM-Calcutta and pioneer revenue just about covers operational of self-serving Left intelligentsia and
in the holiday homes time share indus- expenses. Administrative expenditure commentariat that rich elites are con-
try in India as CEO of Resort Condo- has risen steadily to almost 10 percent genitally incapable of aiding and en-
miniums India in the 1980s, S h u k l a of receipts because corporate donors abling the poor to transform India into
B os e , founder trustee of the Benga- require considerable documentation a middle class nation, has been dis-
k
luru-based P a ri rm a H u m a n ity and compliance with several Central proved by the experience of Western
52 EDUCATIONWORLD NOVEMBER 2022