WeReachOut – Preparing for 2013 Sponsorship
Dear Friends,
Hope you are all doing great, we
have some updates we would like to share with you towards our sponsorships for
the next academic year starting June 2013.
As we all know, the +2 results have been released in many southern
states last week and many well deserving students from our old schools or
neighborhood may be looking for some help around this time period to make right
decision in their career. So please talk to your parents/teachers back in India
and see how you can use WeReachOut to help someone to
continue their education this year. You don't have to be a sponsor to make a
difference, just a little hope for well deserving students by identifying them
through your local contacts and spread the message with like minded people in
your social network to find sponsorship. Most of these students need someone to
speak for them since many of them are in a very vulnerable situation at this
stage and you can be that someone helping them using this platform. Let's take
the first step by identifying the right students from this year’s +2/10th
result and we can definitely find sponsors.
Last year (2012) we were able to
sponsor 73 students from the total sponsorship amount $8,708.00 with all your
generous contributions and support. This year, we are planning to raise $10K to
continue our sponsorships to all our qualified existing students and additional
+2/10th students identified by WeReachOut
volunteers. It's an achievable target, but we can do better by encouraging
other like minded people in our network to make use of this platform to reach
more needy students from their hometown based on their own selection criteria.
Regarding promotional/fund raising events: We are in the process of collecting
needy students detail for this year’s sponsorship and still waiting for the
10th results to be published later this month in India. We will plan a small
fund raising event once we have enough students in our Student-In-Need page and
organize this event with all your support.
Recent Updates:
We have upgraded our website to make
it little more dynamic in sending updates to our sponsors without losing the
integrity of all the existing sponsorship details in our system since 2006.
It’s not complete yet, we will be making further improvements to make it easy
to maintain with our resources/volunteers to serve more sponsors and students
in future. The updates are,
1)
Sponsors
will be notified whenever we post any updates/reports from their sponsored
students with an option to turn off these notifications if they think it’s
little too much going forward.
2)
Provided
an option to subscribe to our updates/newsletter without becoming a registered
member or unsubscribe from receiving any updates in future if not interested.
3)
Please
check "My Home" page if you are a sponsor to see how many students
benefitted from your help with their updates and all your contribution towards
this reach out program with balance since 2006.
4)
The
"My Profile" section allows sponsors to turn on/off 1) Sponsorship
Progress Notifications, 2) Subscription to newsletter and 3) Display sponsor
name as Anonymous based on their preferences.
5)
Option
to share sponsorship amount between sponsors to sponsor a particular student
(The $120 or $240 can come from more than one sponsor to sponsor a 10th or +2
students) and independently track their progress.
6)
Students Privacy: We had some concerns over
displaying student’s pictures/testimonial videos for public on our website for
long time, discussed this with our volunteers on the field in India and made
necessary changes in this release. The public (non-registered) users still can
see student’s gender/age/grade/marks/city to make their decision towards
sponsorship, but only the registered members can view needy student’s complete
details like name, pictures and family details to make an informed decision for
their sponsorship. All our sponsored students detail and updates will be
available only to their sponsors.
7)
Testimonials: We have a framework in place for
sponsors to share their testimonials about how this platform is helping them to
make a difference in others life, they can also edit or change the visibility
of their testimonials (private or public) from the My Home section based on
their preference. We will make it available when we start receiving
testimonials from sponsors.
8)
Sponsoring Students listed in our
Students in Need page:
a.
Decided
to focus only on 10th and +2 students from local language medium (Tamil Medium
Students from Tamil Nadu) with minimum 70% marks in their public exam.
b.
The
10th Students will receive Rs 5,000 to do better in their high school.
c.
The
+2 Students will receive Rs 10,000 to continue their education to college or
other vocational training.
9)
Sponsoring a Student Identified By
Sponsor:
a)
There
is no limit/criteria from WeReachOut
for the students identified by sponsors since they are simply using this
platform/services to help a needy student they see as a fit for their
sponsorship based on their own selection criteria.
b)
WeReachOut cannot commit to continue the sponsorship for the
students identified by sponsors if they decided to drop their sponsorship after
a year or so. We can list them in our Students In Need page to find sponsors if
they fall under our student selection criteria.
10)
WeReachOut has been included into PG & E's list of approved
non-profit to match its employee’s contributions by Mr. Sasikumar
Allidurai, please check http://www.wereachout.org/CorporateProg.aspx to see the organizations matching
their employees contributions to WeReachOut and take
advantage of their gift matching offer to double your contributions if you are
working in any of these organizations.
11)
How
can you help?
a)
Spread
the message about this platform to make it useful for many to reach more
deserving students back in India.
b)
Help
us find needy students from your district/city through your trusted contacts.
c)
Help
us reach our financial goal for this year’s sponsorship with whatever donation
you can make and all your contributions are 100% tax deductible and 100% of
your contribution will be given to your students without any deduction for our
operational expenses.
Overall, we are making progress on
our attempt to make it serve its mission for long time with all your support.
Thank you all for your support and
encouragements to this reach out program to continue our services.
Please visit www.wereachout.org for more
information or call us at (408) 368 7568 for any questions or clarifications.
Thank you,
On Behalf of WeReachOut Team
Richard Solomon
(408) 368 7568
[Note: If you do not
wish to receive any updates from WeReachOut, please
click here http://www.wereachout.org/unsubscribe.aspx
to unsubscribe.]