Exposure to orphanages, senior citizen homes, trusts for visually challenged persons and educational trusts prompted Balaji and Prasad to make a bigger impact by starting Vidiyal Foundation and organizing help for those who need it directly.

When we started in 2013, we focused primarily on education, helping talented students who cannot afford the quality education they need to succeed.

Since then, we have also branched into two other major areas: helping the visually challenged, and women’s empowerment

Areas of focus

 Education

We help underprivileged children who cannot afford education, by

● Identifying talent in need of financial resources
● Identifying willing donors who can help

Our donors usually help not just once, but take care of a student each on an ongoing basis.

In addition to financial aid, we personally visit students frequently and provide them with the guidance and mentoring they need to graduate successfully.

 Helping the visually challenged

 Women’s empowerment

In addition to these, we also come up with efforts to help people in need in times of crisis. For example, during the 2015 Chennai floods, we organized drives to help people with food and other resources in water-logged areas. More than 40 families benefited from our flood relief efforts.

Method of operation

None of the trustees have ever taken a single rupee from Vidiyal Foundation, either as salary or for operating expenses. We do not have any staff. The trustees are employed full-time in other occupations, and carve out time outside of work to run Vidiyal Foundation.

Our work primarily revolves around three areas:

● Identifying needs

● Identifying funds

● Taking funds to needs and ensuring they reach the right hands for the right purpose

All three of these areas come with challenges.

● Identifying needs consists of identifying the right people who are most in need of help. We initially work with Smile Welfare Foundation to find deserving students who needed help.

● As our footprint increased over time, students and others approach us directly. The trustees visit people directly, and verify that the need is genuine and deserving before taking next steps.

● On the other end of the cycle is finding donors. Most of our efforts are for ongoing support in a 1:1 format. For example, a donor offers to sponsor a child’s education year after year. A new donor gets a new beneficiary, and so on.

● Logistics and operations are all taken care of by trustees directly, who are donors themselves too.