By Ritu Jha-
More than 8,000 miles separate the small, impoverished village where Vinodhini Duraisamy grew up and the Bay Area where she lives now.
It is a distance so vast, geographically and culturally, that her father, a weaver who struggled to support his family, didn’t want her to come.
But a group saw potential in Duraisamy, convinced her father to soften his stance, and today Duraisamy holds a Master’s in Computer Science from Arizona State University. She works for tech firm Snowflake and now mentors other impoverished Indian students who come to the U.S. to study.
That group was the Foundation for Excellence (FFE), and Duraisamy was one of more than 300 people who recently attended its 30th anniversary celebration at the Palo Alto, California Crowne Plaza Hotel.
The annual gala raises money for scholarships in engineering, medicine and law that the FFE provides to financially constrained students of Indian origin.
Its mission is to help exceptionally talented but underprivileged students in India become doctors, engineers, and computer scientists, fields with expensive educational requirements. Apart from FFE’s alumni, who support future scholars like themselves, donations come from donors, corporations, and foundations worldwide.
Duraisamy recalled her father needed some persuasion to let his daughter go so far away for so long.
“I had to get my undergrad college professors to talk to my dad and they hyped me up so much and assured him that they would take help from alumni living in the U.S. to take care of me,” she said. “We have a number of people from our universities living abroad. I didn’t know that one could reach out to all these people and they would be ready to help. That came to me through FFE.”
The FFE scholarship not only has lifted her family’s economic condition but also helped Duraisamy’s village and inspired all the youngsters there to dream big.
“If it was not for the FFE scholarship, I would still be in the village and wouldn’t be able to attend college and earn very little,” Duraisamy said.
How it started
Indian American researcher, entrepreneur, and businessman, Prabhu Goel and his wife Poonam Goel, set up the foundation in 1994 after selling his first company. They decided to use part of the proceeds to build a philanthropic foundation to provide scholarships to bright students with financial constraints for college degrees.
The initial focus was on medical and engineering degrees in India. Goel reached out to leaders of other philanthropic organizations in Silicon Valley and built a team that included Raj Mashruwala from Indians for Collective Action, Venki Venkatesh from India Literacy Project, and Mahaveer Jain from Asha, to give shape to the idea and organization. They expanded the team to include Balaji Venkateswaran from India Literacy Project and Dinesh Katiyar from Asha. Subsequently, Pradip Joshi from the Indian Senior Center was also added.
Bengaluru native Rashmi Vishwanath Bhat learned of FFE through a friend and applied in 2016. The Rs 38,000 annually she received for tuition and fees was far beyond her parents’ means, as they struggled for a single meal every day and walked miles because they couldn’t afford public transportation.
Bhat said the scholarship had a “butterfly effect.” It led her to a job at Cisco and then Salesforce, her current employer.
“The donors helped me even without knowing who I was,” Bhat said. “That’s very transformative. I call it the FFE magic because the transformation has been magical. I feel so lucky that it seems like an understatement. I feel empowered when I look back to those days and then realize that I’ve saved so much that I am now able to fund my own master’s. My parents are so proud of me.”
Giving back
Scholarship recipients sign a “soft pledge” that when they graduate and become financially
independent, they will pay forward and support at least two students by donating to the foundation. They also volunteer as mentors and bring in other people from their networks to donate to the foundation or help in whatever way possible.
Last year, 10% of FFE scholarships were supported by alumni contributions. Every scholarship is Rs 50,000 per year. Every student is supported until they graduate, meaning a four-year program for engineering and a five-year program for medicine.
Bhat is giving the help she received back to deserving students who are struggling financially.
“During my donor years, I supported two scholars, and now I aim to support more students because I am employed,” she said. “I’ll be working in the U.S. and I’ll be earning more, so I will be able to give back more.”
FFE alumnus Dr. Somedeb Ball, who hails from Kolkata, is another Indian who has found prosperity in the U.S. after humble origins. Ball says that the FFE scholarship elevated his life and that of his family too.
Ball learned about FFE from a facilitator in his village in West Bengal. He completed medical school in India and then did his residency. During that time, he grew interested clinically and academically in cancer medicine. Because of India’s limited resources, Ball said he realized he could make more research impact in the U.S.
Furthering his career in the U.S. was beyond what his parents could afford. His mother was a homemaker and his father had a small business buying and selling bags.
“Back in those days, he used to make only about Rs 3000 per month,” Ball said. “It was very difficult to sustain our family of four. The FFE scholarship changed my life and my family’s lives in general. I’ve been able to elevate my younger brother and my whole family is now much better, financially. We have also built a new house,” he said.
Ball adopted a scholar last year and he’s pledged to support his medical education for five years with a scholarship amount of Rs 40,000 yearly.
“I think it is a dream come true, but there’s no end to aspirations,” Ball said. “I would like to continue to contribute to science and give back to this society meaningfully, and hopefully, FFE is an avenue for that.”
Covid boost
Based in Bangalore, India, Ram Kolavennu, chief operating officer of FFE India Trust, says the organization has been growing in recent years.
“The first time we gave scholarships to 4,700 students out of the 34,000 applicants,” Kolavennu says. “All these applications were coming from small towns, tier one, and tier two cities. Last year we got applications from Lakshadweep, Andaman, and Nicobar.”
“We find that over time, the students do very well and they get jobs that they dream about,” Kolavennu said. “On average, when they were students, maybe their family income was about Rs 1.5 lakh. But the job that they get when they graduate fetches anywhere between Rs 10-11 lakh a year. And that is a transformation you see immediately after graduation.”
Oddly, FFE’s growth has been aided by the Covid pandemic, says Dr. Sudha Kidao, a managing trustee at FFE India Trust who has been involved in the program for the last 12 years. Before COVID-19, FFE had about 700 volunteers across India who visited applicants’ homes to verify their needs.
“After Covid happened, we knew that that was not going to be possible,” Kidao says. “That proved to be a turning point as we started leveraging technology and we now have been able to scale the program because we have used technology to our advantage.”
Minoo Gupta, president of FFE, when asked what led her to join the organization said, “Education opens doors and I am passionate about promoting all educational causes.”
The gala raised about $700,000, allowing FFE to continue transforming the lives of underprivileged families in India. For Duraisamy, the girl with the reluctant dad, FFE has allowed her to play an important role in lifting her community out of poverty. She says her extended family includes her village, and many people consult her on study material, preparation, interviews and preparing for jobs.
“For me, it’s heartwarming to be able to help them,” Duraisamy says. “I feel that people who are meritorious and academically successful also elevate their village and community. Sometimes even my elder siblings and cousins ask me for advice. I used to think that my life was tough, but when I heard other students’ stories, I realized that everybody had their own challenges. Thank you FFE for helping us.”
