Here is how we spent your donations in the 2021-22 fiscal year:

Total expenses:

$59,678.32

Transportation: $3893.99

We pay for transportation costs to school and tutoring for the students and for families to receive medical services.

Family Assistance: $17,005.97

For the second year we needed to allocate $1.30 per day per family member to purchase food. We’ve been gradually decreasing the amount after considering the circumstances of each family - now sending money every five weeks instead of every three weeks. All three fathers in Delhi have returned to work so we discontinued subsidizing their families this past summer. By the end of 2022 we’re hoping the work situation will have stabilized elsewhere so we no longer need this expense.

Medical Expenses: $5083.34

Our families have made numerous doctor visits for a variety of conditions including kidney stones, typhoid and hip and knee problems. We continued to incentivize COVID vaccinations by paying family members to get all available shots and are relieved to report that this year no one contracted COVID. 

For several years we have been concerned about Priya, one of our Varanasi high school students. She is blind in one eye and over the last few years worried that her eyesight was failing in her other eye. Though we took her to a Varanasi eye doctor and purchased new glasses, her sight became progressively worse. In May we paid for Priya and her mother to travel to Delhi by train to see an eye specialist recommended by Dr. Shelley Batra, our Delhi-based medical consultant. Your donations paid for transportation, food, a hotel, the medical appointments and a new pair of glasses. The Delhi specialist is confident she will not lose sight in her healthy eye. Additionally, we sent Joyti, one of our students in Nowgong, to an out-of-town specialist for severe migraines that were causing her to miss school. The medical visit included train travel, medical costs and meals.

Technology: $712.50

Your donations continued to pay for internet and phone data for all our students and for Milli, a Khajuraho 11th grader, to take computer classes from a tutor. Milli has decided she wants a career in the sciences and is studying hard to make that dream a reality. Each day she rides the bike TIG purchased to before school tutoring sessions. In May we purchased a laptop for her as we’ve been doing for our students who reach the 11th grade. At the end of the 22-23 school year, four more of our students will move up to grade eleven requiring a significant technology expenditure from your donations.

Education, Tutoring and School Supplies: $29, 0367.73

All schools returned to in-person learning at the beginning of the new school year in April and all students continue to receive tutoring. We enrolled five of the youngest children in preschool and purchased books, supplies and new uniforms for most of our students. Two of them, Hemant (grade 6) and Zion (grade 7), tested into a more rigorous school with increased tuition - a TIG success story! 

Our oldest student, Sam, spent the year studying for a difficult university entrance examination. We’re pleased to report he's been accepted at Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences in Allahabad to begin a BS program in Pharmacology. Sam has started the program and TIG made the family a loan for one semester of tuition. This would be another major student success story, but the reality is his impoverished family cannot afford the cost of all four years and neither can TIG. The university scholarship he was hoping to receive didn’t materialize. Sam and his family are very disappointed, and we are as well. We’re working with Sam to find the funds for him to continue there or to pursue an alternative possibility.