Access to Education

The goals of our Access to Education program include:

  • Enabling access to formal education for children from underserved communities through the public education system

  • Supporting non-formal education needs of children from underserved communities

  • Encourage demand for education in families of first-generation school-goers

The program focuses on issues such as school enrolments, nutritional support, counseling services for parents, and remedial education. Children who are part of this program come from some of the most disadvantaged communities, including urban low-income housing areas, HIV-infected families, migrant workers and street children.

The projects supported through this program need to be located in geographies that are close to Wipro locations with a view of enabling meaningful opportunities towards employee engagement.

Guiding Principles

Commitment to Education Sector: The program supports organizations that have demonstrated serious commitment in the education/social sector with a minimum of 3 years of full-time engagement in the education sector or allied developmental issues.

Clear Organizational Objectives: The program aims to facilitate the development of stable educational CSOs that can engage with school education in the long-term and have clear 'organization building' expectations from individuals and teams it supports.

Demonstrable work: Organizations having a strong presence on the ground and willing to or/and have demonstrated capacities to work with the underserved communities and children to ensure that each child has access to school and good education; are prioritized. Besides this, the organizations working on advocacy, strengthening stakeholder engagement, among others, would be preferred.

Balanced Teams: If organizations have to develop and sustain over the long run, it is essential to have balanced teams of partners/co-owners who have clear roles and responsibilities and those who reflect a culture of learning. Organizations demonstrating such capabilities and sensibilities are encouraged to apply.

Selection Criteria

  • The organization should be a registered non-profit with a minimum of 3 years of experience in working on issues related to access to education for children from underserved communities.

  • The organization’s work should be around Wipro locations to enable periodic volunteering engagement for Wipro employees. These locations include Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar, Chennai, Coimbatore, Cochin, Guwahati, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Kochi, Mumbai, Mysore, NCR, Pune, Vijayawada, and Vizag.

  • Note: While the grant support is largely for projects around Wipro locations listed above, the North East states and Jammu Kashmir are an exception to this condition. Organizations in these locations who have demonstrated capacities in the education sector, and meet the other criteria mentioned, are encouraged to apply.

  • The organization should have met the statutory obligations such as the 80G, 12A, IT returns and must be willing to share the financial records of the preceding three years.

  • The organization should have clarity on the operational model (i.e., Theory of change/action). The operating model must include enabling access to education of vulnerable children between the age groups 3-16 years as the key component.

  • Organizations focused on working with the out-of-school, at-risk/vulnerable children are prioritized. This may include, but not limited to children from the migrant labor communities, tribal communities, those from distressed/challenged backgrounds, institutionalized children, children affected or infected by AIDS, abused/neglected children.

Selection Process

  • Interested organizations fill up an Expression of Interest (EoI) form (link below)

  • Shortlisted organizations are contacted and requested to provide a detailed proposal

  • Wipro Foundation team gets in touch with the organization for further clarifications and/or field visits

  • A detailed proposal is presented to the review committee

  • A decision on the grant is conveyed to the organization via email

Note: The review and decision-making process involves multiple stages and could take a few months. Due to large number of EoIs / Proposals received, we may not be able to share individual updates. Shortlisted EoIs can expect to hear from us before 31st May, 2021

Applications are now closed!