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Awards & Accomplishments

Awards & Accomplishments

  • First Ever Pure & Continuous Water – Supply installed for 500 villagers at  Pocharam Village
  •  Praneeth was nominated for National Award for Excellence in CSR & Sustainability in the category of “Social Entrepreneurship” & Outstanding Leadership” – 2016.
  • Article published in “The Week” magazine’s Special Anniversary Edition “THE INDIAN GENIUS” – “Simple local solutions change lives across the nation.”, for Outstanding social work – Selected out of 5 other major organizations
  • “IIT Kanpur – Young Alumni award” under 40 category – Top 7 Finalists  that were nominated for 2019 for his services to the society
  • Nominated for Distinguished Alumni Award – 2019 VNRVJIET for his social work
  • Ray of Hope was featured in International magazine Promosaik recently – going to be translated into 5 international languages.
  • Major awards and media coverage for outstanding social work from Govt. of Andhra Pradesh, IIM Calcutta’s, IIT Kanpur’s, and Eenadu & Sakshi Newspapers’ commendation
  • Received certificate of Apppreciation by  government of Andhra Pradesh for Outstanding Social Work’.
  • Selected as one the Top 10 Alumni in the history of prestigious BharatiyaVidyaBhavan  educational Institute along with State Ministers & Top film actors
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharatiya_Vidya_Bhavan,_Jubilee_Hills
  • Ray of Hope was Selected as the best case study by the most celebrated award winning Professor Mr. Dennis Barsema of North Illinois University
  • Holds the distinction of getting invited by Top Universities and B-schools like IIT Kanpur, IIM Indore to deliver Guest lectures on entrepreneurship and personality development to the MBA students

Our work in Brief:

  • Over 10,000 poor people helped so far
  • 500 orphaned/visually-impaired children facilitated with educational & recreational facilities
  • 200 orphaned children at Pocharam village being facilitated with housing, schooling, medical and recreational facilities
  • Successfully conducted the Bihar Flood Relief Fund collection at IIM Ahmedabad.
  • Free medical camp for over 500 people of concernin collaboration with the NGO ‘Support’- Sanathnagar, Hyderabad
  • Recruitment of Interns from top-notch Business Schools such as The Tata Institute of Social Sciences(TISS, Mumbai)
  • Conducted an inaugural event for the Delhi Chapter with Global Consulting Giant Opera Solutions
  • 1100 challenged children coached at summer camps in Mathematics, Dance and Cricket
  • Commended by IIT Kanpur for Outstanding Social Work
  • Allied with corporates like Opera Solutions, National Informatics Computer Technologies, Nichole Infotech, PBEL City under CSR initiative
  • NGO Immersion Programs of IIM Indore, IIT Kanpur PFA.
  • Efficiently offered Internships to the students from Top notch B-schools like IIM – Ahmadabad, IIM – Calcutta, TISS (Tata Institute of Social Services), Vellore Institute of Technology
  • Successfully formed alliance with corporate  like Opera Solutions, Nichole InfoTech, PBEL City under CSR initiative , Women and Child Welfare projects of Government of Andhra Pradesh
  • Collaboration with e-commerce companies like Apollo hospitals, Rainbow hospitals, Global Consulting Giant Opera Solutions,Chikkadeal & Littapparel
  • Alliances established with IIT Kanpur, IIM Kozhikode.
  • Over 200 volunteers at IIT Kanpur acquired in less than 4 months
  • 1100 challenged childrencoached at summer camps in Mathematics, Dance and Cricket
  • Provide comprehensive teaching program for 600 specially challenged children
  • Provide market aligned skill training for the 745 specially challenged youth
  • Provide early intervention facilities to children with disability
  • Support and facilitated Cochlear Implant Surgeries / Aids and appliances for hearing impaired children to promote health care
  • Offer hearing screening facilities for new born children in public hospitals and diagnostic facilities
  • Organize National Environment Awareness Campaign with the help of Forest & Environment Ministry New Delhi.
  • Organization ran health campaign, sanitation campaign, literacy campaign, environment campaign through out the whole year in 7target grampanchyat resulting in positive outcome by 34% increase in output
  • 7 SHG’s Bank Financed. SHG’s started Income generating programme.

Our  Founder, Mr. Praneeth, is a man of grit and passion. What is unique about him is his determination and will power to stand tall amidst all adversities and take this Ngo ‘Ray of Hope’ ahead. Undoubtedly this Ngo is his brain child, which aims at bringing love ,peace and hope into this world filled with pain and misery.Apart from his academic excellence, he is a voracious reader and a kind hearted gentleman who strives to uplift the lives of people around him and in this world at large. His family and his team members form his strong support system. Inspite of the many awards and letters of appreciation from some eminent people, he chooses to be humble and grounded,a quality rarely found in people.His love for children and the broken hearted is definitely remarkable.!! He looks forward to spread far and wide through the activities of his ngo and wishes to bring smiles in the faces of the needy!! We wish his mission finds wings and he be blessed!!

  • Praneeth was nominated for National Award for Excellence in CSR & Sustainability in the category of “Social Entrepreneurship” & Outstanding Leadership” – 2016
  • “IIT Kanpur- Young Alumni award” under 40 category – Top 7 Finalists  that were nominated for 2019 for his services to the society
  • Nominated for Distinguished Alumni Award – 2019 VNR VJIET for his social work
  • Selected as one the Top 10 Alumni in the history of prestigious Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan  educational Institute along with State Ministers & Top film actors          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharatiya_Vidya_Bhavan,_Jubilee_Hills
  • Member of Advisory Council to help in the Strategic Design of CSR India – United Nations awards which consisted of dignitaries

Torch bearers –  Praneeth’s Parents : 

It all started with Praneeth finding out from his mother Noorjehan, a Government Officer, about the requirement of blankets for the 300 orphaned children and the 30 old women at a Home calledShishu Vihar”. He felt  it to be unfair for all of them to brave the cold and wanted to do something for them. There stemmed the idea and the Team was thus formed with V. Vara Prasad, Ch. Prudhvi Krishna, C.L. Madhava Krishna, A. Naresh Kumar, Hari vardhan, Pavan Babu, Praneeth and me, Tharun Sholarajan who have all been close friends from our engineering days at VNR VJIET, Hyderabad, and began our attempts by persuading and encouraging people around us. We contacted many of our old friends, some of whom are now in the US and received a huge response. The students at Career Launcher (Hyderabad) were informed too. They were all quite enthusiastic and not only donated but also raised funds from others as well. Thus the network started spanning to new horizons.

We then decided to find out if anyone else other than us was interested in helping these poor kids and we went door-to-door spreading the word. We were quite surprised to see the number of people who were willing to give something : cash or kind, it didn’t really matter, the fact that they were donating showed us that humanity still existed among most people. There were two unexpected surprises in this process, first of which was from one of our friends, Ramakrishna, who was in the US for his M.S, who donated a substantial amount. This was a great contribution as he wasn’t employed and was struggling in the US, but still  donated that money. The second was from a fruit vendor, who whole heartedly donated Rs.500/- of his hard earned money.

This was the turning point for us as this showed the kind of trust that people had in us and also that almost everyone is interested in reaching out to the needy and just needed a medium which they could trust their resources with. We decided to be the channel through which help was rendered. Our initial plan was to collect funds that would suffice to buy  blankets and mattresses for them, but considering the amount of publicity it had generated, our funds were equally mind-blowing and by the end of the campaign, we ended up collecting around 10 times more than what we originally set out for!!! Now with such a large amount of funds in our kitty, we went miles ahead and purchased clothes, play equipment, lots of books and book shelves for the children, and a Television Set for the old women there.

After this, we spent the evening at Shishu Vihar and left with loads of exuberance and a sense of increased responsibility. Our initial plan was this short term campaign, because we were all heading off to different horizons in lieu of our different career plans. However, this experience changed it all! At Shishu Vihar, we had taken photographs, which we mailed to everyone who contributed and even to those who didn’t. We did this as we wanted to reinforce the trust that everyone had in us and contributed so generously, to show them that without them this wouldn’t have been possible. We also wanted them to feel the joy and exuberance that we felt when we visited the home.

Our Friends were mostly either in the US doing their MS or in India working for IT companies. They were so moved by the photographs that they spread the story where they were and wherever they went and started collecting funds. So, through word-of-mouth, the funds started pouring in, in huge proportions. We now started thinking about our long term plans and that the place that we are in shouldn’t be a barrier to our work, neither the distance between us. We started believing that this would only help us increase our network and  help us reach out to many more people; both the people who would like to work for this noble cause and  also people in need, as we would find people in need anywhere and everywhere. We invested these funds in places viz., The Good Samaritan Home in Pocharam Village, Devnar Blind School (Begumpet, Hyderabad), Ashray Akruti (Little Angels School for the Hearing Impaired, Hyderabad), etc.

Post these events, we received a substantial amount from Naresh Agarwal, one of our classmates from college and this was just 2 days prior to Praneeth leaving to Kanpur. Naresh was both thankful to us that we shared the photographs with him and also sorry that he didn’t contribute the first time around. This was so unplanned and we realized how amazing it was that without any particular planning as such, we have achieved so much.

People continued to send funds though we never had any intention to keep this work going on. One fine day, we decided to name our organization and it was as if it were meant to be “A Ray of Hope…” Time and again, the trust and faith that everyone had in us was reinforced. We were in a bit of a dilemma as to what should be done. when Praneeth’s father advised us to continue the good work, and so we opened a community for Ray Of Hope in Orkut, a social networking site, which received a stupendous response.

This name stemmed from the hope that everyone has to lead a better life and there would always be someone out there for them, who would be, literally, their Ray of Hope… and the journey continues..