Give wings to underprivileged children for their dream trip to NASA.

Meet Bhavani. She wrote this wonderful story with questions by herself when she was in Grade 2. It might be normal for you and me but for this young girl it was an expression of her desire to do more; more than what her reality constrains her to do.

She is from one of many marginalized communities in old city area of Hyderabad. Her father runs a small shop and mother is a house wife. She is a first generation learner. Due to the financial constraints, her parents can only afford to send her to a low budget school where fees is less than ₹250 pm. Now she is in grade 7, consistently topping her class and trying to dream a little more but pulled back every time by the reality. But she’s not the one who easily gives up.Inspired by the stories of Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams, she now dreams of becoming the next female astronaut from India. People from her community have never dared to dream this big. But she can change that. She can bring a new hope in the community and inspire others to dream big.

And you can be a part of it.

Bhavani along with 9 other students from under-privileged communities have been selected for a dream trip to NASA (Johnson Space Centre, Houston) by the KAT Academy.

About KAT Academy
KAT Academy is brainchild of Dr. Mohd Anwar, Chairman of MA Ideal Schools. He is someone from the community. For more than 30 years he has been championing the cause of providing quality education to children from under privileged communities. He strongly believes that by providing opportunities and creating powerful experiences like this will motivate the children to dream bigger and improve their confidence.

In says “I believe in providing opportunities, give exposure and build high expectations in life of the economically suppressed children (underprivileged students) “. He aims to inspire students, teachers, school leaders, parents and low income communities to believe in themselves, take ownership and collectively provide a better education to their children.
With this belief he started the KAT Academy in partnership with Loop Education Foundation. As a first major initiative, 10 deserving students from under-privileged communities will get a chance to go to NASA.  To select the students, an aptitude test was conducted, the KAT exam.

About KAT Exam
KAT (Knowledge Aptitude Test) is an in-house designed standardized aptitude test for students in Budget Private Schools of Hyderabad. More than 4800 students (from Grades 3 to 10th) across 69 Low Cost Private Schools in Hyderabad gave the first round of assessment in January 2018. 780 students qualified for round 2 from which top 10 have been selected to go to NASA. Next 40 students will be taken to ISRO Sriharikota and next 50 students to VIT Museum Bangalore. You can know more about the exam, results and the participating schools here: www.bpsnasa.com.



Trip Details
Along with the 10 students selected, 2 teachers will be accompanying them as guardians. The 12 member team will visit New York, NASA HQ at Washington and Johnson Space Centre at Houston.  We have already received a confirmation from NASA for the logistics of the trip which will happen in first week of May.

The total cost for the trip to NASA Houston and back for team of 12 is coming out to be around INR 23 Lakh ($35,500).  
The cost for taking 40 students and 6 teachers to ISRO Sriharikota is coming to be around INR 1.3 Lakh ($2000).
The breakdown of the cost can be can be seen on this sheet .
Total cost of the trip (including the taxes etc) would come to INR 25 Lakh ($38500)

How Can You Help
You can give wings to the dream of Bhavani and other students selected for the trip by contributing to the campaign. As little as your one day's salary can be a big contribution for the campaign.
You can also help us connect with corporates and organizations who can support the trip logistically.
You can spread the word in your circle, among your friends, family and colleagues.

A small act of kindness from you will go a long way in empowering the under-privileged children to dream big and give them a hope, hope for a better world.