Who are we?

The Candle Project is an NGO run by 40 odd youths from the city of Mumbai for the past 3 years. During the week some of us attend colleges while the remaining have day jobs, but on the weekends we choose to utilize our time by reaching out to underprivileged kids in Versova, Mumbai.

The kids are a lot of 100+ kids in the age group of 4 to 14 years who attend government aided schools during the week. Since the English taught at the schools is not good enough for them to converse in, they lag behind in basic English conversational skills which is the most important factor to secure a job when they grow up or to secure a seat at a good college.  Some of them even dropout of school with the pressure of learning through the English language which they find very difficult as they generally communicate in Hindi and Marathi only.

To help these kids complete their education and be capable to earn towards a better standard of living, we teach them conversational English and Vocational subjects like computers, arts, sports, music, drawing, etc. are taught to boost their confidences and bring out their hidden talents.

Why are we fundraising?

We believe in quality education that each and every child is entitled to and we want the kids to have a better future and grow from an underprivileged society to living their dreams.  Since our organization comprises of young volunteers only we strongly believe in teaching through modern methods that are fun and interactive. We wish to impart the English language to the kids through technological knowhow, general knowledge, happenings around the world and so on. Thus providing a holistic learning & development of each child.

What do we plan to do with the funds?

Our children come from financially disadvantaged families and they do not have access to technologies like computers & tablets.  With your help towards these funds we want to introduce them to technology by buying 10 tablets, one for each of the 10 classrooms we teach in and 3 wi-fi dongles to share among the classrooms.  Each of our classrooms comprises of 10-15 kids with 2 volunteers, the ratio defined by 5-7 students to 1 teacher (so that we can give more attention to help each of them individually). We believe that by teaching through tablets we can improve our methods & make learning more fun and interactive and take a step beyond the traditional ways.  With our experience of teaching over the past 3 years we have seen kids show an immense improvement with interactive media compared to books or worksheets. These tablets will not only help us to give a real time access to online resources through the wi-fi dongles but will also assist us in collecting data about every child and provide an accurate measurement towards their progress.

So help us to shape the future of these children towards a brighter path so that we have lesser slums and more of educated people by donating whatever amount you can towards this cause!

The estimated costs for our fundraiser are:

10 Tablets ranging approximately around 6500 each i.e. 65,000/-

3 Wifi dongles for internet approximately 1500 each i.e. 4,500/-

Other stationery* items required for daily use (for 100 kids) 10,000/-

Total Amount required 79,500/-

*Stationery will include books, pens, pencils, chalks, colours, paint, craft/art papers, paint brushes, colour pens, glue, scissors, etc.

-Tablets will be the basic ones purchased strictly for educational use.

In case, anyone can help us crack a deal with a decent tablet brand, please get in touch with Manali at mana@thecandleproject.org