annual report - 2011 -2012 (final)

Annual Report

2011 - 2012

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http://www.hopehouse.in

HOPE House expresses its heartfelt gratitude

to the following supporters

Christian Medical College, Vellore

Sekar & Sandhya Foundation, Vellore

Students of ‘Vellore Institute of Technology’ (VIT) & Auxillium

College, Vellore

Christ Chruch, Gandhinagar, Vellore

Rotary Club of Vellore

The Ganga Trust, Chennai

Rotary Club of Williamstown, USA

Hope House International, Chico, CA, USA

Southcrest Baptist Church, Lubbock, TX, USA

Redeemer Church, Lubbock, TX, USA

Betenbough Homes, Lubbock, TX, USA

Cole Therapy Center, Houston, TX, USA

Heavensent Ministries, WV, USA

International Protestant Church, Brussells, Belgium

B & B Builders, Vellore

GiveIndia

Individual Donors like you

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Table of Contents

1. Details of the Hope House ………………………. 4

2. Director’s thoughts ………………………………... 8

3. Overview of the Hope House ………………….. 9

4. Children’s Home for Girls ………………………. 10

5. Accounts ……………………………………………….. 16

6. The Educational Assistance Program (TEAP) 24

7. Community Outreach Program (COP) …….. 25

8. Awareness …………………………………………….. 25

9. Visitors …………………………………………………. 26

10. Goals ……………………………………………… 26

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Details of the Hope House as of 31/03/2012

Name of the organization: The Hope House

Registered as: A Charitable Trust

Date organization registered: November 25th, 2004.

Registration number: 1268/2004

Registered office address: 16/28, 25th East Cross Road, Gandhinagar, Vellore – 632006

Communication Address: 16/28, 25th East Cross Road, Gandhinagar, Vellore – 632006

Chief Functionary’s contact: Mr. Ruby Nakka, Door No. 1, 7th East Cross Road, Gandhinagar, Vellore, Phone: 0416-2244816 (Home), 9629471920 (Mobile), [email protected] (Email)

Vision Statement: Nurturing children to become successful and responsible citizens.

Mission Statement: Our mission is to provide care and protection to the needy children by giving access to education, enabling participation and empowering them with information about their rights and responsibilities

Objectives of the Trust: (as per the clause # 6 of the Trust Deed)

1. To establish, to run and maintain an orphanage for the homeless,

casteless orphans, to protect them from poverty, loneliness and illiteracy.

2. To take or give adoption of orphans including new born babies and children

3. To serve them food, shelter, clothing, education and employment

4. To develop and implement projects for self employment to achieve self reliance among women

mailto:[email protected]

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5. To serve for the educational development of the socially and economically backward students. To provide best and useful computer education at a very low cost affordable by the students in the rural areas

6. To spread literacy among women and the working uneducated youth through non-formal methods of education

7. To develop plans and implement the same for the development of women and children

8. To take up development projects of the state and central governments and to assist them to implement its various but similar projects

9. To develop fine arts and culture of national interest

10. To organize quiz programs, various competitions, seminars, etc among school students

11. Award of scholarships to socially and economically backward students for higher studies

12. Guidance and counseling for students and educational institutions

13. To develop proper scientific attitude among students, teachers and the general public.

14. To work for the development of Science and Technology throughout the country especially in rural areas.

15. To provide medicines, boarding and lodging for the poor, both young and old, male and female students.

Names of the Board of Trustees as of March 31st, 2012

1. Mr. Ruby Nakka – President & Director (Ph: 9629471920)

2. Dr. Rajan Samuel – Managing Trustee (Ph: 9894175566)

3. Mrs. Vinodhini Nakka – Managing Trustee (Ph: 09790369726)

4. Mr. Thomas Mathew – Board of Trustee (Ph: 9442248370)

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5. Mr. Manoah Mohanraj – Board of Trustee (Ph: 011-91-530-781-4005)

6. Mrs. Veena Nayak – Board of Trustee (Ph: 9382663322)

7. Mr. Arunachalam Jeyaraj – Board of Trustee (Ph: 9443245017)

8. Mr. Samuel N. J. David – Board of Trustee (Ph: 9940840108)

9. Dr. Guru Nagarajan – Board of Trustee (Ph: 9443454358)

Relationships of Board of Trustees: Board of Trustees # 1, 2, 3 are related either by blood or through marriage.

Remuneration received by the Board of Trustees during the year: Rs. 1,20,000/- to Mr. Ruby Nakka who also works as an Executive Director of the HOPE House.

Dates when the Board of Trustees meetings held

1. 31st August, 2011

2. 28th September, 2011

3. 28th of October, 2011

4. 30th of November, 2011

5. 30th January, 2012

80 G Status: Granted in 2006 and currently it is active Registration Number: DIT (E): 2(740)/ 05-06

FCRA Status: Granted in June of 2011 and currently it is active Registration Number: 075980304

PAN Number: AABTT0804G

Number of full time employees: Four

Number of part time employees: Three (Accounts Manager, Maths Tuition Teacher and Psychologist to offer counseling services)

Number of volunteers or honorary employees: One

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Highest paid Salary: Rs. 10,000/- per month (Paid to the Executive Director)

Lowest Paid Salary: Rs. 2000/- per month (Paid to the cook). This employee had also received free food, accommodation and utilities throughout the year.

Bank Account Details: Both domestic and foreign accounts are with State Bank of India (Vellore Town Branch). Domestic bank account number is 10404160337 and the foreign account number is 30040652570

Salary distribution table Full Time

Employees

Part time

employees

Honorary

Employees

Male Female Male Female Male Female

Above Rs.

10,000/-

Between Rs.

10,000/- to Rs.

5,000/-

2

Below Rs. 5,000/- 2* 3

Honorary 1

*Staff received free food, accommodation and utilities throughout the year.

Expenses on International travel incurred by the staff: Zero

Expenses on International travel incurred by the Board of Trustees on behalf of the Hope House: Zero

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Director’s Thoughts

Dear Friend,

This time of the year is one of the most exciting times in our organization because it

helps us to reflect with gratitude upon the year that just went past by and to look

forward to the opportunities and challenges that the new year to bring.

At the outset, I would like to thank our Lord Almighty for taking us through the entire

year with His abundant grace and guidance.

Most important change that I can report to you from last year is reconfiguration of our

Board of Trustees (BoT). To promote transparency, we have expanded the BoT to Nine

from Seven and made the BoT proportion of ‘unrelated’ people as the majority. We still

have few more steps to go to complete this process and they’ll be done during this year.

Out of the six goals that we had set in our last annual report, I am happy to inform you

that we have completed three (obtaining FCRA registration, applying for the adoption

agency license and completing the formalities to get the mini-bus from Rotary) and two

are almost close to being completed (being listed with GiveIndia, and completing the JJ

Act registration) which leaves us with one goal that is to begin the construction of a girls

home. We have started the process but not the construction in itself.

For the first time, we have joined hands with GiveIndia to raise funds during ‘India

Giving Challenge’ this year and I am happy to inform that we have worked hard to reach

the goal (three lacks of rupees). We intend to do this every year from now on.

On the operations front, I am disappointed to inform you that we have stopped working

with the government boys’ home due to operational difficulties but continuing to

support the boys that are pursuing higher education (beyond 12th grade) but needs

financial help. Girls’ home is growing leaps and bounds not in terms of numbers but in

terms of quality of care that is offered.

There’s no amount of expression that I can write to tell you how I feel about each one of

your sincere and unselfish support for the Hope House. It would be incomplete to close

this letter without expressing my heartfelt gratitude to each one of you who’ve

supported us. THANK YOU.

Sincerely

Ruby Nakka

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Overview of the HOPE House

HOPE House (HH) was started operations in 2005. It is a vision of three Non-Resident

Indians living in the US. In 2004 when one of the three had adopted a baby girl from

India, they were touched by the blessing of their daughter but moved by the stories of

other children that need a place.

In 2006, one of the family relocated to India to be part of the operations of the HOPE

House and the second friend joined them in 2009.

HH operates a children’s home for girls to care and provide for the orphan, semi-orphan

and disadvantaged girls. HOPE House operates in a town called Vellore in Tamilnadu

and most of the children that they caters to come from in and around Vellore.

HH started with two children and currently they care for 16 girls. Girls receive

everything that they need to stay in a hygienic environment under an adult supervision

and to be able to pursue education. HOPE House’s operations are modeled on “Rights

Based Approach” which emphasizes teaching the girls about their rights and

responsibilities.

HH also works with families that need help in the communities. Objective of this

program is to discourage families from bringing children to institutions by providing

them with needed help in their own communities.

Mostly families that are affected by HIV/ AIDS are being chosen for this program and

given financial assistance on a monthly basis to purchase milk, toiletries (shampoos,

soaps and coconut oil etc) and groceries from a public distribution shops (ration shop).

Currently HOPE House helps about 20 families. Families in this program are required

to be in continuous treatment and to send the school going age children to school.

Third and the last program that the HOPE House is been working with is called “The

Educational Assistance Program” (TEAP). Objective of this program is to help those

that complete 10+2 level education and intending to go for higher education and

needing financial help.

It is our desire and vision to start more non-institutional approaches to help more

families to keep their children in their own communities while receiving assistance.

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CHILDREN’S HOME FOR GIRLS:

This year also the number of girls that we care for remained the same as last year

because of the physical infrastructure limitations. One girl has been referred to the

Hope House by Child Welfare Committee (CWC) of Vellore district. Many more girls

have entered into the adolescent stage than last year that brought newer dimensions to

the care of the girls.

Average height and weight of HH girls in the past two years

2010 - 2011 2011-2012

April, 2010 March, 2011 April, 2011 March, 2012

Height 139.94 CM 142.63 CM 142.99 CM

Weight 28.16 KG 31.56 KG 32.96 KG

All the girls have passed their exams to move into the next class with highest class

being the 10th graders. Two girls will write their 10th grade board exams in April

and two are attending special school for the mentally retarded at WORTH trust.

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’Learn & Earn’ : To help the girl develop interest in the subject of Science, hope

house has developed an incentive based program called “Learn & Earn” where

children will be paid money for demonstrating a science experiment. Girls were

told demonstrate as many as five per head and each experiment will fetch them

Rs. 100/-. This program was conducted in the month of October when the hope

house was taking part in the “Joy of Giving” week celebrations. Local business

“B & B Builders” had underwritten the entire expense and the locals along with

media was invited to give more exposure to the girls. ‘Vellore Institute of

Technology’ (VIT) students helped the girls to develop their experiments and

event was a huge success in terms of confidence and interest building in the

subject. After this event was published in the media, hope house girls were

invited by another NGO called “Pravaham” to showcase their knowledge to the

tribal school children which they accepted readily and demonstrated as needed.

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Rotary empowering children: When Rotary chose to give a mini-bus to the

girls at the hope house in 2011, they wouldn’t have realized what their gift would

do to the mind of a little girl. When the girls got the news of arrival of their gift

(25 seater Swaraj Mazda mini bus), they were challenged to think beyond their

comfort zones. They were asked to introspect to see why they deserve this gift

when hundreds and thousands of other children still have to endure the

hardships of going by the public transportation. Those challenges inspired a 10th

grader to do something that no one had ever imagined. She decided to write a

letter to our state Chief Minister (equivalent of a state Governor in the US)

suggesting to her to start an exclusive public transportation service for the school

children in our state. She quoted nine different reasons why other school

children like her needs such a service and got it co-signed by other children.

After two months, she received a reeply from the CM’s office turning her request

down due to the paucity of funds. HH encourages and nurtures the students to

become leaders and this young lady’s courage has inspired other girls to be like

her.

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VIT & Financial Literacy: A group of students of ‘Vellore Institute of

Technology’ (VIT) in Vellore decided to do a project under their college ‘Center

for Social Entrepreneurship Development’. Project was to allow a child to draw

whatever they like and then those paintings were scanned, and turned into

buyable products (calendars and wall hangers etc). They sold these products in

their college social events and brought and gave more than 8000 rupees for the

hope house. This project sounds like a no brainer but what VIT students

suggested that this money be used is where the entire project made so much

sense. They requested the hope house to open a bank account for each child and

deposit for their own use to teach them financial literacy. To make things even

more easier hope house has opened savings accounts in a nearby post office

(instead of a bank) and advised the girls to use the money for their own needs.

We feel that the girls not only help themselves through this activity but also

towards nation building.

Here are the passbooks of girls’ post office accounts

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HH girls enjoying a picnic at Yelagiri boating center.

HH Girls @ ground breaking function To

construct a permanent building for them.

Rotary Club of Vellore handing over a cheque to Swaraj Mazda rep

through a child who wrote a letter to the Chief Minister

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Products that the Hope House girls helped create for the VIT students at display at GraVITas

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Brief on our accounts for the year 2011 – 2012

As the Hope House is registered as a public charitable trust, it is operated with the

generous donations received from the public. It is absolutely humbling to hear the

stories of people’s sacrifices to support the Hope House. There are little children that

contribute their pocket money while the elderly pay for the special lunches to celebrate

their anniversaries. We feel it is the right thing to report about the funds we received to

you – the donor, and how we spent it.

In the month of June, we received the FCRA registration which we had been waiting for

the past one and a half years. In this year, we had three significant events to report. As

you browse through the numbers in the following pages, knowing this information

might help you to get a bigger picture of the Hope House’s accounts

First one is the gift of a mini bus that the Rotary International donated to us which is

reflected as “Donations received in kind” (partly under domestic and the rest under

foreign) which amounted to about Rs. 9, 60,000/-. Second being the funds received

from the Hope House International – our fiscal intermediary in the US, for the

operations and for the construction of a permanent building for the girls at the Hope

House. Building fund was received just few days before the closing of the financial year

and the amount received was . Thirdly, last year we partnered with GiveIndia during

‘India Giving Challenge’ to raise funds and we are happy to announce that we were able

to raise Rs. 3, 05,000/-

As we conclude this brief, we want to take this opportunity to thank every one of our

supporters who did so unconditionally through their resources, time, and prayers.

Without you this work will not move forward and so we want to assure at this time that

if you have any queries regarding our accounts, please feel free to ask us and we would

be glad to answer them for you.

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THE EDUCATIONAL ASSISTANCE PROGRAM (TEAP):

TEAP is an assistance program for the disadvantaged students that like to pursue higher

education beyond 12th grade. Currently hope house supports nine students studying

different course ranging from Engineering to Catering technology to Bachelors of

Commerce. Once the student is referred, we do a thorough background check to ensure

that the referred student genuinely is in need of help and once it is determined financial

assistance is extended.

It is our desire and vision to build a corpus of which we only use part of the bank

interest each year to give away as assistance while the remaining is put back into corpus

to build it year after year. We would appreciate any generous donors that like to be part

of building this corpus.

These two paintings below were donated to the Hope House by a

TEAP beneficiary that is pursuing fine arts in Chennai

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COMMUNITY OUTREACH PROGRAM:

Community Outreach Program is continuing to support families that are affected with

HIV and in need of nutritional support. Last year, HOPE House has expanded the

program to include families that are affected with life altering disabilities.

Currently, HOPE House supports the families for half a liter of milk per month,

cosmetics (such as shampoo, soaps, and coconut oil) and monthly groceries purchased

from public distribution system.

We have created a simple sliding scale to measure the monthly benefit eligibility to

ensure that the families do not become passive dependents on the HOPE House which is

helping the families to earn more for themselves.

Due to the difficulties of public distribution system, we are contemplating to switching

to a model where they are given money through a cheque to allow the families to

purchase the items of their choice at a place of their choice. Unfortunately many of our

beneficiaries are illiterates so they do not have bank accounts. We have started

educating our beneficiaries to open a bank account so that they can receive money

directly.

Due to the dignity issues involved in this program, we are unable to show any of the

beneficiaries through photos but if you would like to meet up with any of our

beneficiaries, do let us know and we would arrange for such a meeting with the

beneficiaries consent.

AWARENESS:

After the ‘Learn & Earn’ program appeared in the media, another NGO called

‘Pravaham’ in Vellore district and invited the Hope House girls to come to demonstrate

their science skills to the tribal school children. We thought to make use of the

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opportunity to help the children understand their rights and the Hope House girls had

done an amazing job by their eloquence and presentation skills. They received lot of

applause from the teachers of other schools for the amount of knowledge they possess

on the subject of child rights.

VISITORS:

We appreciate the following individuals and teams that have chosen to visit the HOPE

House during the year 2011 – 2012

James & Lynda Stanly, IA – USA

Sarah Duhon, Scott & Krystal Layher, TX – USA

GOALS:

We set ourselves the following goals to accomplish for the next year 2012 – 2013

Complete GiveIndia listing

Complete adoption agency registration

Complete the construction of girls home

Complete the permanent registration of the HOPE House under JJ Act.

Partnering with the Vellore district’s Child Welfare Committee (CWC) to work on

Child Rights in Vellore district

Start working on a pilot study to promote exclusive public transportation for the

public school going children.

Start a corpus fund to support ‘The Educational Assistance Program’ (TEAP)

annual report - 2011 -2012 (final)

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