Help Saikat!

A little history behind the current candidate (From an acquaintance in Calcutta who forwarded this to me):

“Regarding Saikat, I know his background since his father is working with us for the past nearly 20 years climbing up the ladder from the peon to stores supervisor. His wife had undergone open heart surgery last year at CMC, Vellore for Mitral Valve replacement for which he took a loan of Rs. 1.50 lacs from the company and still he is spending beyond his means for her medicines, tests etc. The boy understood the hardships of life and given a little encouragement will definitely outperform others. His school has sponsored him as 1 of 2 candidates for National Talent Search Examination, 2010. As I informed you earlier he is studying in a Govt. school where the school fee is very low and the quality of teaching is also equally bad. To cope up with others, he has to take private tutions after the school hours which costs very high and this is applicable throughout West Bengal. Even Missinnary schools like the one which Manas is attending, condition is the same and I am shell
ing out Rs. 750/=- P.M. for his Mathematics tution in spite of their school charging an exhorbitant fee.”

Request you to please help with the cause!! You can contact us at info@creativeminds.com, if you need more information about Saikat, and our efforts to help him go to school.

Online Donation

I have just created a Paypal Online donation page , to facilitate contributions for Saikat's cause from across the globe! To learn more about Saikat's story and how you can make a difference in the lives of children like Saikat,visit our website!
You can donate (through our secure Paypal gatway) by clicking on the button below or through our 'Sponsor a Child' page. Thanks for participating in this campaign!

Brainstorming Session

We had our board meeting yesterday. Dhana and Arun have completed their review of Saikat’s transcripts and background details - this definitely seems to be an authentic case. After a vote count, we have unanimously agreed to start work on Saikat’s fund raising campaign!
So here is the breakdown:
Target Funds: Rs 50,000 (approx. 1200 USD @ Rs 40/$)
Timeline: 28 Days
Volunteer Size: 12
Dhana proposed the usual approach (knock on doors, distribute pamphlets and stick posters on college campuses, emails etc ) but I think we might need to step this up a notch. I propose to use Facebook, Twitter and Orkut as campaign platforms and also build a donation site. I am pretty confident that with some aggressive social media marketing, we might be able to pull this off. And of course, the old timers were skeptical! But they are right too, we haven’t done this before, and we are really tight on timelines.
I have promised to come up with a strategy (time to use my internet marketing ‘templates’!) and see how it pans out. Meanwhile, Kantha is preparing a draft of our standard marketing strategy; we should have everything ready for review by Monday. Then baseline.. and go!

Saikat Ghosh

I was talking to my uncle, Raju, on Monday. He shared the story of Saikat Ghosh, an eight grader and the son of a store-supervisor at his company, in Calcutta.
Saikat’s mother had recently undergone heart surgery at CMC Vellore for a Mitral Valve replacement, for which Saikat’s father had spent Rs 1.5 lakhs (about 3400 USD) for medicines, tests, etc. Because of these expenses, he was now finding it difficult to pay his son’s tuition fees of Rs 50,000 (about 1200 USD) for the year, and the enrollment deadline was fast approaching. I also found from my uncle that Saikat is an extremely brilliant student. His school has sponsored him as 1 of the two candidates for National Talent Search Examination, 2010.
Looks like this may be a case we would be taking up. We are currently reviewing his transcripts and doing some background checks, but everything looks solid so far. We are having a board meeting on Tuesday to finalize a fund-raising strategy. We probably need to act quickly.