Few Words from V. Suresh, Trustee – Ajit Prabhu Foundation

During my college days I use to borrow books from Book banks so that I don’t have to buy costly books required for my graduation studies.  As soon as I got a job and started earning, first thing I did was to buy few sets of books for B. Com studies and donate them to the same Book bank which lent me books during my studies.  The kind of response and encouraging words I got from the Book bank officials kindled my philanthropic journey.

When Ajit expressed with me that he would like to put a structure to his ‘Giving back to the society’ idea, by supporting education of about 1,000 needy and bright students, I could immediately relate to it and registered a Trust in India and started evaluating various NGOs who can be partnering with us in this noble journey. Among few trusts GSB Scholarship League, Wadala, Mumbai stood out and the processes which they were following were close to what we were looking for and we started collaborating with them in identifying the needy students.  Since 2017 we are holding annual scholarship events, in Mumbai and in Mangalore, India, where in, all the selected students (for the Ajit Prabhu Foundation scholarship) along with their parents come over and interact with Ajit in a lively manner.  This not only provides them a chance to meet the “donor” but also hear from Ajit on his experiences in life, particularly the hardships that he has gone through to get here, what he is today, and at the same some useful guidelines for the budding graduates on the how they can decide their future course of action to be successful in life.

Like Ajit keeps saying during the scholarship events, while addressing the students,  ‘’Giving bank to the society” is with the motto of ensuring that the aspiring needy students get much needed financial support and achieve what they want to achieve in life.  Such one successful person per family can support entire family and few other families around him/her. This chain of helping hands grows, leading to a healthy and wealthy society.

It has been a great journey so far at Ajit Prabhu Foundation and we have been able to cover about 300 students of various disciplines in last four years and would like to reach out many more deserving students.  Some of the students who got the scholarship, initially, are now graduates and have started their carrier in reputed companies.  When they come to us and tell about their success stories, it’s so heartening for all us to hear.

With current Covid -19 situation we all are witnessing challenging times and I have personally come across more need of this kind of Scholarships for the needy and aspiring students. We strive more to help the needy so that lack of financial support should not affect another Ajit like personality, in the making!!