Annual Report 2020-21

Year 2020-21:

The challenges of Covid-19 Pandemic started in the last quarter of 2019-20. By the time Rotary Year 2020-21 stared on 1^st July, things had started improving bit by bit. Still earlier days of paying student fees by cheques drawn in the name of their Institutes were clearly over. So was the method of collecting physical paper application forms.

But our Club Members gallantly rose to the occasion. All the Project Information sharing and promoting was completely shifted to Digital Media. The Application Form was made available for online filing. Our VLS Committee was apprehensive about receiving lesser number of Applications. However, the end result was exactly opposite. We received record number of 350 applications. After removing duplicates, about 300 Applications were accepted.

With the help of Mr. Antariksha Joshi and Mr. Satyajeet Jadhav, the online forms were converted to 1 PDF file for every application. These were then made available to all our members online. Traditionally, scrutiny of Forms, used to be a Get Together of all Members and Spouses. That was simply not possible this year. So 10 Groups were formed.

Dr. Rajesh Agarwal, Hitesh Ganatra, Rajesh Gupta, Seema Joshi, Sudhir Joshi, Dr. Jayant Kulkarni, Arihant Lodha, Ashwin Malde, Dollar Shah and Vishal Thakkar functioned as Group Leaders and got all our members involved in the scrutiny process. These groups scrutinized all the forms and Short-listed 180 Students. For Interviewing the students, these 10 Groups were compacted to 6. Dr. Rajesh Agarwal, Nitin Kabbin, Rajesh Gupta, Seema Joshi, Sudhir Joshi, and Vishal Thakkar functioned as Interview Group Leaders. Interviews were conducted over Zoom meetings spread over many sessions. Students participated along with their parents. Finally, 112 students were select to receive the Scholarship, at an outlay of Rs.60 Lac. Along with students selected in earlier years, we have disbursed Rs.1.12 Crores to 171 Students. We are grateful to all the Group Leaders, Group Members and spouses, who wholeheartedly participated in the process, contributing their valuable time and wisdom.

To summarize, the year 2020-21 too, proved to be even better than the earlier one, with the project achieving many new milestones.

• 
  4 CSR Donations: Along with our 3 CSR Donors, who continued to support the project in a big way, we also received CSR Donation of Rs.1 Lac from AMN Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd., thanks to efforts by President Dr. Rajesh Agarwal.
  

• Aarti Industries Ltd. gave a donation of Rs.15,00,000. We are happy that Shri. Rajendra Gogri, MD of Aarti Industries Ltd. continued to take keen interest in the project. We are grateful to Aarti Industries Ltd., Shri. Rajendrabhai for their generosity and our own Member Rtn. Deepak Shah for his help.
  

• Play Games 24X7 Pvt. Ltd. Supported the project with a donation of Rs.33,18,791/- in March 2021. We feel overwhelmed by the trust shown in VLS Project and Rotary Club of Mulund. We have accepted this huge donation with a sense of humble responsibility. We will make every effort to be true to their expectations. We thank the Company, its Directors and their CSR team led by Mr. Malaykumar Shukla, Ms. Garima Tripathi and Mr. Nandlal Yadav.
  

• BANYAN TREE ADVISERS PVT. LTD. 2 Donations of Rs.2,60,000/- and Rs.4,10,000/- was received from Banyan Tree Advisers Pvt. Ltd. This is the fifth consecutive year of their donation. We sincerely thank Shri. Jigar Shah and other Directors of the company for their generosity. We look forward to their long term association with the project. We also received a personal donation from one of their associate. Shri. Ghanshyam Kashiram Prabhu. We are grateful.
  

• We received Funding under TRF District Grant No.2119423, amounting to Rs.2,27,541/- We are thankful to DG Sunnil Mehra and DGSC Ashok Kumar Mehra. This amount also included earnings from R. Z. Shah Endowment for 2019-20 and 2020-21. We are grateful to our Charter Member Ramnikbhai and Ansuyaben for making this earnings, available to the Club.
  

• 112 STUDENTS selected in 1 year : With First time, the number of Students Selected in a single year crossed 100. Total number of students zoomed, touching the figure of 412.
  

• FUNDING IN 2020-21 Crosses Rs.1 Crore 12 Lac: The gross Scholarship Disbursement in 2020-21 was Rs.1,12,25,437/- taking cumulative Scholarship Figure to Rs.4,19,72,718/- .
  

• When the NEFT payment is not accepted by the Institute, we were helped by Rtn. Sharad V Shah, Rtn. Arihant Lodha and Rtn. Vishal Thakkar with online payment from their personal accounts, which was later reimbursed to them. Thanks a lot !
  

• Rtn. Dollar Shah has been a continuous support of the project. His contribution for all the work related to Arihant Bank, as well as completing and printing these very reports is invaluable. Thank you Dollar !
  

• Rtn. CA Viren Gandhi and his office staff have been issuing Funds Utilization Certificates required for CSR and District Grants, for last many years. They scrutinize the accounts and other papers and then issue the Certificates. We are grateful for this help.
  

• The 3 year tenure of the present VLS Committee is ending. We place on record our appreciation and gratitude for the Committee Members R.T. Patel, Hanskumar Shah, Dollar Shah, Ashok Agarwal, Hitesh Ganatra, Sudhir Joshi, President Dr. Rajesh Agarwal, IPP Arihant Lodha and PE Ashwin Malde. A new Committee will continue the work from 1^st July 2021.
  

• Due to prevailing situation and lockdown restrictions, no special function was held to disburse the Scholarship. Annual Student Get Together was not held during 2020-21.