By Alyce Biddle | Community Manager
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:
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