Educate 90 Students in Sri Lanka - ItOnlyTakesTen!

Dear Educate Lanka Patron, 

We hope you continue to enjoy a successful 2013! It has already been three months since our last update. So here's our progress and a glimpse of what we are up to in 2013:

First, exciting news from the ground. 

On the Ground Efforts in Sri Lanka: During past holidays, more than dozen of us volunteers from different parts of the world traveled to Sri Lanka and took time off from their vacation to join forces with our volunteers on the ground to carry out Educate Lanka's efforts throughout the island. 

• Reach: Within a few weeks, we traveled over 5,000 kilometers around the country (including North and East) to conduct scholarship distributions, meeting current students, parents, and liaison officers as well as extending our reach to new areas including Negombo, Anuradhapura, Vavuniya, Medawachchiya, Mannar, Batticaloa, and Trincomalee. 
• Relationships: During this visit, we also engaged in building and strengthening some very exciting relationships with partners including the Ministry of Education, UNESCO, Asia Foundation, US Embassy, USAID, Korean Embassy, numerous Chambers of Commerce, Room to Read, Intel and a number of other local and international partners. 
• Collaborations: Building up on these relationships, we are hoping to initiate new collaborations that will yield valuable impact to our beneficiaries. One such immediate partnership is Coco Veranda’s "Water With A Difference" project which we look forward to launching in the coming months.
• Harvard Research Visit: We co-hosted a team of 15 graduate students from Harvard Graduate School of Education who researched on barriers to education for the Estate Population in hill-country. We gladly joined them on field visits and meetings during a successful two-week research. We look forward to their findings and recommendations which will be presented to Educate Lanka on April 22nd at Harvard University. 

Awards and Recognition: We are very grateful to many organizations that continue to reward our efforts with important recognitions, helping us to continue our work with greater efficiency and impact. Here are some of the most recent ones: 

• MasterCard Foundation: We are thrilled to have been approved for a seed grant by the MasterCard Foundation to support implement our growth strategy in 2013. Stay tuned for official announcement soon! 
• Clinton Global Initiative (CGI): We are invited to represent at the CGI University 2013 in St. Louis, Missouri as a partner Youth Organization. We are excited to meet President Clinton again! 
• Echoing Green: For the 2nd year in a row, we qualified to the semi-final round of highly competitive Echoing Green Fellowship. Please wish us luck to advance through to the next round and win the fellowship in 2013.
• IGNITEgood: Having won the $10K grant from IGNITEgood, we are now eagerly waiting for IGNITION 2013 workshop in New York City from June 10th - 15th. Also, look out for our blog posts on Huffington Post soon!

Impact:

• During this time in Sri Lanka, we distributed over Rs. 2.5 million (~$20,000) in scholarships to our current student portfolio from all around the country. As part of our expansion strategy, we are looking to increase our portfolio to nealry 500 active students by 2013.

Progress of Fundraising Goal:

• Thanks to your generosity, we are now at almost 98% of our Global Giving fundraising target. With more than 150 of you contributing already, we are just $200 away from reaching the goal of $10,000. 

We hope you enjoyed reading our progress and pleased with the progress and impact of our volunteer efforts. With support from patrons like you, we will continue to empower those in need by giving them opportunities they deserve, building the next generation of future leaders in Sri Lanka. 

Thank You! 

Links:

• Help Reach Our Goal
• See Us In Action
• Hear It From Us

Dear Educate Lanka Patron, 

It has been two months since we successfully completed the September Open Challenge. With your invaluable generosity, we managed to earn a permanent presence on Global Giving. Although the project is still underway with less than 10% more to reach our fundraising goal, we are extremely pleased to share with you our progress as well as a glimpse of what we are up to over the next couple of months. 

Since September:

 Progress of Fundraising Goal:

• Thanks to your gracious generosity, we have raised 91% of our Global Giving fundraising goal so far. With nearly 150 of you contributing already, we are confident that we will reach the target of $10,000 by December, 31. 

Awards and Recognition:

• We are extremely pleased to announce that Educate Lanka was selected as one of the ten most innovative social impact projects by IGNITEgood Millennial Impact Challenge organized in partnership with Huffington Post. Educate Lanka will receive $10,000 and training through a three-day boot camp and workshop in New York City in March to help scale our impact.

Impact:

• Over the last two months, we have added nearly 30 new deserving students to our current portfolio. This batch of students are of special significance to us because after months of due diligence and hard work, we have managed to successfully extended our reach widely to the North and East of Sri Lanka with nearly 20 new students from Vavuniya (North) and Batticaloa (East). 

On the Ground Efforts in Sri Lanka: 

• This holiday season, a group of our Educate Lanka volunteers will be traveling to Sri Lanka to take time off from their vacation to carry out efforts throughout the island by joining forces with our volunteers on the ground. We have planned to conduct scholarship distributions, meet current students and their parents, and extend reach to new students through partnerships in the following areas: Colombo, Negambo, Puttalam, Kandy, Kurunegala, Hatton, Badulla, Galle, Anuradhapaura, Vavuniya, Jaffna, Mannar, Batticaloa, and Ampara. 
• In addition, Educate Lanka will be hosting a team of Graduate Students from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in January who will be conducting research on barriers to education for the estate population in the hill-country. The research will be presented to Educate Lanka to help extend our reach to the deserving under-served students from those areas. 

We hope you enjoyed reading our progress and pleased with the progress and impact of our volunteer efforts. With support from patrons like you, we are able to empower those in need with opportunities they deserve, creating leaders for a better tomorrow. 

Thank You! 

Links:

• Hear it from Volunteers: Giving Back through Educate Lanka
• Donate to reach our Goal