Help Continue Education of Students hit by COVID 19

Gurukul School is a low-income private school serving the students majorly coming from Malwani, Mumbai, the second biggest slum in Asia for the past 16 years. The sudden but necessary lockdown due to COVID-19 has posed an unprecedented problem for us. Our students are from families of daily wage workers, unorganized sector employees, small businesses and need the continuity and support of their school now, more than ever. Their families are hit economically and may not see a steady income for the foreseeable future. This poses a problem for the families to send their children back to school.

We are also at a loss for salary payments at least for the next 4 months. Ordinarily, we cover our costs from the fees of some students and donations from benevolent people and organizations. As a result of their financial situation, we are not receiving any school fee and any other means of generating income through education projects is also gone. The delicate balance between our income and expenses has collapsed. We support over 900 students and 40 employees. With our income severely affected, we are unable to pay our staff and teachers. Our being unable to pay our staff and teachers’ salaries extends the chain of financial instability to many more families. Our staff includes men and women coming from marginalized backgrounds, whom we trained under us to teach the children from the underprivileged families and to manage and run the school.

We aim to protect the right of education and livelihood during this pandemic. We need your help now more than ever. We predict that this situation will go on for at least the next four months. Our students' parents will need some time to recover and be able to pay the fee.

Right now, online giving is more important than ever as it will allow us to put your gift to work right away.

Apart from the amount raised, we are also looking to raise money from other donations and our savings and loans.

Your support is crucial for the next 4 months. We have identified 200 students for whom paying fees would extremely difficult under the current circumstances and the money collected into their fees as this will give enough time to our students’ parents to build themselves up and for us to be back on track with other sources of earning or to set up new projects. We plan that at the end of 4 months, we are self-sustaining again.

• The money raised would cover the urgent pending bills of the school including the infrastructure costs, payment of employees and ensure that school will be able to provide quality education to its students even through the lock-down.
• This would also mean that the families of these 200 students doesn't have to discontinue the education of their children for the next academic year as their fees for the year would be covered.
• The money collected would divided would be divided equally among all 200 students.
• The academic performance of these students would be shared with donors at the end of every month
• The donor paying fees for the entire year of one student would receive separate monthly update of one particular student from the list in addition including videos of the student is doing well in different fields.