Second Mission in Visakhapatnam Andhra Pradesh, India Aug 2024

We made a 3 week trip to India in August 2024 to start our second mission. I’m lucky  to not have done this by myself. Since our last mission in March, I brought along one of my classmates, Josef Marshall. We were also joined by Rohan Kamath, my childhood friend from New Delhi to help in the mission. All of us were able to nearly quadruple all of our previous figures from our first mission.

Thanks to your support I have been able to begin making an impact in my hometown, and we’re hoping that with your prolonged support we’ll be able to do more good.

Above: 50 Scholarships provided to students of AVN College

Above: 5 Scholarships provided to students of Premasamajam Orphanage

Above: 25 Scholarships provided to students of BVK College

During this time, me (Rohan Cherla), Josef Marshall, Rohan Kamath and my mom (Sai Cherla) have completed the following:

  • 350 applications received and triaged
  • 150 interviews conducted
  • 104 scholarships given (13,000$)
  • 4 schools sponsored (AVN, BVK, Prema Semajum, Andhra University)
  • Connected with the commissioner of Visakhaptnam who promised to stay in contact with and to give us a personal team in Visakhapatnam for our foundation’s needs
  • Connected with CEO of Lansum Buildings and other influential contacts
  • Centralization, formalization and updated master database 
  • Creation of fully online and autonomous application submission system  allowing for fast triage and instant integration into the BF database
  • 250 total hours worked.

Similar to our last mission, students were generally able to pay a portion of their school fees. Seeing the integrity and selflessness of bright Indian students deeply inspired us. It is only thanks to their transparency and your support that we were able to award 80 scholarships this trip. Their incredible work ethic and heart are truly commendable.

The majority of applicants were children of farmers, fishermen and laborers, and were typically raised in single income households with the father as the primary earner. In a substantial number of cases, families were very close to pulling their children out of school so they could work to support the family. Moreover, a few students were forced to miss exams as they could not pay the examination fee.

Throughout  this mission, we’ve found that this reality is not exclusive to A.V.N, and is widespread amongst the schools and colleges of Andhra Pradesh. The core mission of Bright Futures is to give all these deserving kids the same chance that I was given. At the end of the day I truly believe that I and all other humans are their equal and deserve access to education.

Because this was our second mission, we created a master database to organize all the applicants. We also devised a 7 point system to review applicants to make sure we awarded scholarships to the most deserving and needy students. The system is as follows:

  1. Receive the applications of students who struggle financially and are Bright
  2. Remove students who have already received scholarships that same year
  3. We then cut students from a grade cut off of 75%
  4. Further increase the grade cut off to 80% while also keeping certain applicants based on their extracurriculars and writing submissions If the number of applicant is still above the desired amount of interviews we would like to conduct (around twice as many scholarships we are able to give) 
  5. Conduct interviews asking about both their personal goals and financial situation
    1. Which class/grade
    2. Future occupation
    3. Improvement plan if any
    4. Daily routine/schedule
    5. Parents occupation and annual income
    6. Total tuition fees
    7. How much the student can pay of their tuition
  6. Remove candidates who are above the financial threshold and who do not require financial assistance at the moment (we will keep their application for next year)
  7. Carefully triage the final candidates from the group based on their grades, financial situation, their character, and the likelihood that the scholarship will bring them back on their feet

Make sure to follow our social media platforms where we have posted highlights of our first trip, and make sure to look out for our website launch. Thank you again for believing in us.



    

Instagram: @jb_bright_futures_foundation 

Facebook: Bright Future Ajb Foundation 

Website: thejbfoundation.com 



Contact Information:


Company: jbbrightfuturesfoundation@gmail.com

Founder/CEO: rohanjbcherla@thejbfoundation.com

COO: josefmarshall@thejbfoundation.com


India:   +91 817 937 2683

Canada:   +1 416-587-8959