2023-2024 Fundraising
We are Bhavishyath Counselling, a career counselling and guidance NGO set up to help underprivileged students reach the job and careers of their dreams.
Nagesh is keen on getting a government job but isn’t aware of the intense competition for scarce government jobs.
Poornima is a bright student in 10th grade who wants to become a doctor but doesn’t know what subjects to take in 11th to further her ambition.
Nandini is not really interested in science but peer and parental pressures are pushing her in that direction.
Bharat‘s family is getting a hard sell from unscrupulous private colleges in a neighbouring district though he can get admission in a low-cost and better-quality government institution nearby.
Divya’s dad has passed away and the pressure on her to drop out of school and contribute to the family income is high.
These are the kinds of problems we see, and address.
The pitfalls to finding dignified and aspirational employment for the rural poor and middle-class in India are many. Education quality is poor. Students have few opportunities to discover talents and develop skills. Role models and sources of good advice are rare. Myths and disinformation about jobs and courses abound and there are unscrupulous people who are seeking to profit off their dreams.
Bhavishyath does this through classroom sessions where we engage students in a discussion about careers and their future and follow it up with individual phone counselling. We have many testimonials as to the concrete value we have brought to the lives of students from this work and much positive feedback from education department staff, teachers and parents.
Complementing our field work, we also create tools for career guidance like short films and mobile applications, typically as fee-for-service projects to education institutions or nonprofits. We have created course curriculum related to skills and careers for the Delhi government.
We started by working in Anantapur, a backward district of Andhra Pradesh. This year we have expanded to two other backward districts, Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh and Yadgir in Karnataka. In these projects, we partner with local NGOs who partly fund the work and we train their staff to become independent counsellors. Through our work so far we have we have touched 20,000 students.
We are a lean organisation, currently at 5 staff members, and have delivered our results with a small team and keeping expenses low (we are distributed work-from-home team and don’t have a formal working office yet). We want to remain that way.
About myself: I graduated from IIT Chennai, did a Masters and worked in technology in the US and India for a decade before transitioning to the social sector. I worked at Arghyam, a water and sanitation foundation in Bangalore for several years before setting up Bhavishyath.
Our long-term mission is to use our field and tool development work to advocate and partner with governments to embed career guidance within the education system. We’d love to have this complete and become redundant!
In 2023-24 our goals are:
– 5 NGO/CSR collaborations reaching 20,000 students
– Direct collaboration with government in one state/district.
Our requirement for next year is 35 lakhs Rupees of which we have arrangements in place for 20 lakhs. We are fundraising for the balance of 15 lakhs.
If you’d like to learn more, please reach out to me on +91 779 583 0546 or mail us at bhavishyath.counselling@gmail.com
If you’d like to make a donation, you can do this online at https://pages.razorpay.com/pl_HKa0joq7onitJj/view . Donations are tax deductible in India. (If you are not an Indian citizen, please contact me for further information)
Vijay Krishna, Founder
Bhavishyath Counselling 