Build a Home for Former Child Beggars in India

Right now in India the children are on their summer holidays. Many of them are spending time with their families, enjoying some playtime and even doing extra lessons in English and Maths to help them get off to a good start when they return to school in June.

The need to build a new house for the children in our care remains. Over the past few months we have shortlisted a number of different sites that would be suitable for building – with the money that was raised through your generosity covering the costs. However, due to complications with licenses and transferring money the process has slowed down.

In order to transfer funds from foreign organisations to NGOs in India you need a special license. We’ve been operating under another license which legally allows us to send money to India but this license is capped at a certain amount which is far smaller than the amount it would cost to purchase land. We began the process for obtaining the full license last year, but during our process time the Indian Government halted all applications and shut down the process, meaning we have to start from the beginning once more – this was extremely frustrating for us.

You may have heard in the news the trouble organisations such as Greenpeace and Amnesty have had over the last few years.. The Indian government has blocked high-profile NGOs like them from receiving foreign funds, which as you can imagine has sent shock waves through the not-for-profit sector in India.

While this presents a frustrating roadblock for us it is by no means the end of things. We are currently working with an accountant in India who is helping us obtain this license. Inevitability this is a long process but we stand a good chance of being approved and getting the money to India eventually. In the meantime the funds you so kindly donated remain earmarked for the building of the new home, so you can rest assured they will be used to achieve our eventual goal.

We are continuing to raise funds to help us reach our total target. Members of the My Name is Kumar team are focussing on fundraising efforts within India to help speed up the process in the meantime – and we have a number of promising partnerships developing.

In other areas  the children continue to do fantastically at school and all children in our programmes will be returning to school at the end of the month. Highlights over the past 3 months include celebrating International Women’s Day with all the girls and women from the community – an account of which can be found in the links below. We’re also sad to say goodbye to our intern Demi, who was with us from the Netherlands, and writing her thesis on our organisation. Her work was on the professionalisation process of our partner organisations CARE Foundation and we’re really looking forward to reading her final recommendations.

In September we will be running our first ever visit of our projects in India, giving our supporters the opportunity to see first hand the positive impact their donations have made. If you would like to join us this September then more details can be found using the link below. But be quick! Spaces are limited and the deadline for signing up is the end of the month.

Once again, many thanks for your support and patience. We’ll continue to keep you updated on the progress of the project and the license.

Very best wishes and sincerest thanks,

The My Name is Kumar team

Links:

• Project visit September 2017

Back in November, on Giving Tuesday, we did something we hadn’t done before. We launched a month long campaign, with a target fundraising goal and deadline, in order to kick start our fundraising to build a new home and tuition centre for the children of My Name is Kumar.

We did better than we ever expected – we received a total of 166 donations and so far have raised over $16,000. As a result of your generous giving we also won two prizes from GlobalGivingUK which resulted in an additional £1,500 in bonus funding. We hope all of you received our initial thank you email but we would like to say thank you one more time for your amazing generosity and support.

The ‘Build4Kumar’ project is well underway, with a dedicated team working to make it a success. Right now we are in the process of vetting a number of different sites for the build. To do this we are working with a local, independent third party who is advising us on each site’s pros and cons. We are looking for a piece of land very close to our current base, which is both close to the Londor community (the begging community we work with) and the children’s school. This piece of land must both comply with local and national child welfare standards and with our own requirements and is therefore a vital and step in this project.

Thanks to introductions made by friends and volunteers in India we will soon be meeting with a prospective architect: a woman who has recently finished a project in which she designed and oversaw the building of a sustainable school in Tamil Nadu. This is an initial meeting but we hope that it could be the start of a working partnership.

Our current self-imposed deadline is to have made a decision on land purchase by the end of March. Then from there it will be all hands on deck to begin the design and build of the new home. Additional members of our team will be travelling to India over the summer to assist with work.

This is a huge project, so in addition to our individual fundraising which you have all been a part of, we continue to apply to a number of grant providers to enable us to raise the rest of the necessary funds. We have already been successful with our applications to a few grant giving organisations, but we would always appreciate any recommendations you have for funds that support this kind of project. If you can think of something we should investigate, please email henry@mynameiskumar.org .

We look forward to updating you in another couple of months on the progress of ‘Build4Kumar’. In the meantime stay tuned and watch our Facebook and blog for more news on the progress of all our other projects and the children in our care.

Thanks once more!

Links:

• Details on the 'Build4Kumar' project