Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) On The Education Assistance Program (TEAP)

What is TEAP? It is an educational assistance program of the hope house. It is extended to the most disadvantaged students of our community that wishes to pursue higher education (college education) beyond 12th grade (high school) How do you identify the beneficiaries? Most of the beneficiaries are known to us or referred to us by someone that knows about this program and individuals that is in need of help. They network us with the beneficiaries. How much assistance do you offer? It varies from beneficiary to beneficiary. We encourage the beneficiaries to come up with as much help as they can manage (from government scholarships, corporate grants, other NGOs help, and personal assets etc) and we help the rest. What accountable standards do you have in place? Except in exceptional cases, we dont give the money up front to the beneficiary but to the institution directly. Even when we give directly to the beneficiary, it is through reimbursement only upon producing the receipts. Beneficiaries are required to produce their certificate to prove that they passed the exams each year before they qualify for the assistance for the next year. How many students do you help now? At present, we help totally 10 students. How does the 5 lacs rupees that are to be raised through cyclothon help this program? We wish to keep the money in the bank FD account and use only part of the interest to be given away as the assistance. Let say for example, we raise 5 lacs, and it fetches interest of 8%. So the interest earned per year would be about 40,000 rupees and 75% of it (Rs. 30,000/-) will be distributed for the assistance while the remaining Rs. 10,000/- will be added to the corpus.

Doesnt 5 lacs rupees sound too small of an amount for a bigger impact? Agreed, but since this is our first year to participate in the cyclothon, we decided to do it with the smaller amount but we would like to join in this cyclothon each year to build the corpus. Hopefully in few years time, this corpus will be large enough to make bigger impact Are there any hidden costs involved in 5 lacs rupees? Costs involved in Ruby Nakka cycling for the hope house in New Delhi (train ticket, his stay for a day and the registration for cycling etc will be paid from the funds raised and remaining will be put into the bank FD. How do I know that this money is really put into the FD? Once the cyclothon is over (on April 1st) and money transferred to us by GiveIndia, we shall post all the details (funds raised, expenses incurred and the FD etc) on our web site (www.hopehouse.in) Tell me little bit about the hope house? The Hope House is a registered (in 2004) public charitable trust that works among the disadvantaged sections of our society mostly with children. Our approach is one of rights based (where child is included in the decisions that are made) rather than welfare based. We are based in Vellore, Tamilnadu. How can I help in this cyclothon? You can help in two ways. One is by joining in the Tour de India 2012 in New Delhi on April 1st. This will cost you Rs. 2500/- (if you want a bicycle otherwise Rs. 2000/-) for registration and part of this amount (Rs. 1309/-) will be given to the hope house. Second way to help is by simply making a donation at our iGive page on the GiveIndia site. This is the link: http://www.giveindia.org/iGive-cycleforthehopehouse I have a question, how can I contact the hope house? You can write to us at info@hopehouse.in or by calling 9629471920