Search the Internet          Tips

India Education Initiative to go public

Suman Guha Mozumder in New York

India Education Initiative, a not-for-profit organisation founded by business leaders in Bombay to promote primary education in India, is looking at garnering the support of expatriate Indians in the United States and elsewhere for its mission.

At a press conference in New York, the organisation announced its plans for the global launch of IEI at the New York Stock Exchange on September 12 in the presence of industry and community leaders from India and the US.

Among those expected at the event, which is being organised in cooperation with the American India Foundation -- another not-for-profit organisation founded early this year to help the victims of the Gujarat earthquake -- are Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF, Azim Premji, chairman and managing director of Wipro Ltd, and Victor Menezes, chairman and CEO, Citibank, North America.

"Our operations are in India, but it is important that we tap the resources in this country and elsewhere from people who are truly interested in the development of India," Rajat Gupta, managing director, McKinsey & Company, told a press conference at the NYSE on September 5.

"It is important that we introduce the initiative in this country, the world's oldest democracy, and make sure that everybody gets involved with what is going on in the world's largest democracy," he said.

Among those present at the press conference were Dr Madhav Chavan, founder of Pratham (first or primary), a grassroots education movement in Bombay that gave the impetus for the formation of IEI.

Dr N Vaghul, chairman of ICICI Ltd and one of the founding members of Pratham and IEI and Vijay Goradia, managing director of Vinmar International, Houston, Texas, joined the conference via conference call.

According to IEI, the challenge for the organisation in a country with an illiteracy rate exceeding 35 per cent, is to first provide an incentive to school-age children to attend school, and then to keep them there.

"The job has just begun and we have miles to go. But today, my heart is filled with hope that the goal of universalisation of primary education in India is no longer an impossible dream, but a vision with reach," Vaghul said.

IEI, which was formed in 2000, is the outgrowth of the seven-year-old primary education programme Pratham, whose low-cost, easily replicable model involving the community was recognised as one of the three most innovative projects in the social services sector worldwide for the year 2000 by the Global Development Network, a collaboration of the World Bank and the Government of Japan.

IEI, which is an umbrella organisation focusing on the Pratham model, is attempting to support a growing network of programmes by raising funds, encouraging local initiatives, providing seed funding and monitoring programme progress.

Gupta said IEI, which started from the slums of Bombay, has now grown into a scalable model where government, businesses and international community are all partners.

Others like Chavan said that when Pratham was started in 1994 they were not sure it could turn into a scalable model. "Today, it has become a scalable model that can be replicated with local modifications," he said.

Asked if the sole purpose of launching the initiative in the US was to collect funds, both Gupta and Chavan said the initiative went much beyond fund-raising.

"What we visualise is a much broader involvement of people from US, a kind of emotional and intellectual support [from them] that will help sustain such programmes," he said.

Back to top

Tell us what you think of this report