How We Work

The selection process begins right after the announcements of the dates of Madhyamik and Higher Secondary results. These are some steps what follows right after that:

1 . Among all the volunteers and members of Padakshep, a selection committee is formed, one of them being the Head of the selection procedure for the particular year.

2. The total workload gets distributed among all the volunteers in the selection committee. For each newspaper (for example, Anandabazar Patrika, Bartaman, Pratidin, The Telegraph, The Times of India etc.) , a team of 3-4 volunteers are assigned. Right from the announcement of the results, the process of selection begins for each team. Their duties consist of:

a) The first one is to keep a close eye on each day’s edition of the newspaper to spot any published news of financially needy but meritorious student. Checking all the regional editions of each newspaper is included as the part of the job. If one reads a news that shows a potential student, it’s recorded in a Spreadsheet that is created just for the selection purpose. They also keep the record as a screenshot from the internet or original newspaper of the news.

b) Then volunteers start calling the newspaper office, corresponding school’s teachers to get contact information of the potential students. Some generous reporters and employees of the newspapers help us in this process each year.

c) After getting contact information of the students, volunteers communicate with them to collect information about their financial and educational status. The information are recorded in the mentioned spreadsheet in an organized manner.

d) After 3-4 weeks of this intense information collection phase, a Skype meeting is held with all possible volunteers to select a few students based on voting. We usually select approximately 10-12 students, for full support and 20-25 , for the Library project.

3. Generally three volunteers are assigned as Library volunteers. Their job is to quarterly monitor, get information about scholars’ results and their need of books. If a library scholar needs books in between an academic year, they can contact a local volunteer. The Library tries to accommodate such request in best possible way.