We are FOUR

FOUR Friends On Your Right side.
“The purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better.”
― Robert F. Kennedy

We are FOUR childhood friends, with a similar purpose of working on social issues, and making things better. With a combined experience of over 80 years in science and technology, sales, and entrepreneurship, we work on FOUR facets:

1. Technology: ensuring transparency, traceability, and the prospects of scaling out and scaling up.
2. Trust: conducting comprehensive research, triangulating information, and building reliance in the minds of our donors.
3. Tryst: developing an ongoing relationship between the donors and the students to provide emotional support, and instill confidence.
4. Tutelage: mentoring our students, and helping them get a head start in their chosen career paths.    

FOUR Facets

Technology, Trust, Tryst & Tutelage
Technology

Arokiyam, an on-call driver, was hit harder than many others by COVID-19. He lost most of his driving hours to the first wave. He pulled through by borrowing money. The second wave was the worst. Arokiyam lost his wife to it. With reduced work load, an emotional loss that was (and is) beyond comprehension, two daughters to feed, educate, and support, Arokiyam was lost. He needed 43 thousand rupees, and had no clue as to how his wife was able to run the family with the 15-20 thousand that he would bring in. Thanks to the goodness of a donor and their willingness to help, Arokiyam is now able to feed, educate, and support his daughters.

Our foundation did not introduce the donor to Arokiyam. In fact, the donor introduced Arokiyam to us. In spite of already knowing about Arokiyam and his family, the donor wanted us to facilitate the process. When asked why, he simply said that our foundation handling the process will warrant clarity and clearness at every juncture.

Such transparency and efficiency are crucial for many donors, and more so for a foundation like ours. We are able to provide valuable transparency, effective tracing, and trust using technology. The system that we have designed is 100% electronic, recording every transaction, publishing, and providing payment receipts to all parties in record time. For starters, we only make online payments to the schools and colleges via ERP/Payment gateway/NEFT, thus eliminating cash from all of our transactions. What this means is that we never give out cash to either the student, or their family, or their educational institution. We have also ritualized a back-to-back payment method to ensure that incoming funds do not stay in our bank account for more than 24 hours. By sharing every receipt straightaway, and by making every transaction traceable by using unique identifiers, we pride ourselves in using technology to give every person the surety that we are all arduously working towards the same goal of helping students and their families effectively.

In the future we plan to use technology to design more efficient ways to scale out, scale up, and make a bigger difference in many more students’ lives. Technology will also play a significant role in helping us create robust maps to connect and align everyone that has contributed to or has benefitted from our organization. Such a map will help scale out our scope, and scale up the impact that we can  

Trust

“Is this a genuine candidate?” With us, the answer is always a resounding yes. Let’s look at Karthi, a student that we were able to help stay in school by matching him with a donor. Karthi’s father reached out to us as he was unable to pay the school fees. We did our own research to verify that the information that the father provided was in fact true. We spoke to mutual personal connections to learn about the family’s socioeconomic status. We then spoke to the school authorities to acquire knowledge regarding the student’s academic standing. We did this to make sure that if the fees are met with the help of a donor, the student and his performance show enough promise to give a sense of satisfaction to the donor that their money will in fact make a difference. We even verified that the school authorities that we spoke to were legitimate employees of the school. We then spoke to the student himself to ensure his interest and keenness in school and education. It is only at this point that we were confident to present Karthi to our donor/s. Using such systematic and comprehensive research to triangulate information at every point most definitely takes several person hours, but this is how our organization goes that extra mile to establish trust, the most important value in any agreement or relationship. 

Tryst

Paying the term’s fees is immediate and important. But it is just a start. What happens the next term? The burden of not knowing whether or not your fees will be paid the following term can be very demoralizing. It is for this reason that we ask our donors that they commit to supporting the student until the student graduates from the program that they are enrolled in. Such a commitment helps build an ongoing relationship between the donor and the student that they are supporting.

Another vital facet of this tryst is that the donor is able and willing to support the student emotionally to a certain extent, by being a mentor that the student can trust and reach out to. The students that we support are, for the most part, first time school and college goers in the family. They are not very sure about how academia works. Being unsure of oneself takes its toll. Something as simple as telling the students that they can do just as well as anyone else in class can be just the confidence boost that they need to do well. Small acts like recognizing the improvements that they are making at school, and helping them out in (what may seem) simple things like practicing speaking in English, can instill self-confidence in our students, and motivate them to keep trying harder and doing better at school. We firmly believe that such continued engagement can make the most positive impact in the lives of our students.  

Tutelage

The advantage of having decades of experience in the corporate world is that we have a wide network of industry connections. With such a wide network, we aspire to use our connections to mentor our students. The aim of this tutelage initiative is to help with our students’ professional development. The mentors will serve as advisors and sources of industry information to our students. Such tutelage will help our students gain invaluable insights about their field of interest from experienced professionals in the same field. Students can discuss their career goals and ambitions with the mentors. The mentors will, in turn, advise students, provide information regarding market trends, and can even help with establishing contacts for possible internships and even jobs. 

Your support and contributions will enable us to meet our goals and improve conditions. Your generous donation will fund our mission.

© Copyright 2021 FOUR Foundation Trust. All Rights Reserved.

Built with Mobirise maker