US foundation fetes 7 budding techies

Students with their scholarships at BIT-Sindri on Sunday. (Gautam Dey)

Seven students from three tech cradles of Jharkhand were on Sunday presented with scholarships by Foundation for Excellence — a US based non-profit organisation that provides funds for higher education to students in India who are academically gifted and are from low-income families.

The students — three from BIT-Sindri, three from NIT, Jamshedpur and one from Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad — walked home with scholarship amounts of Rs 25,000 each, with one boy even bagging a cheque of Rs 30,000, from Sindri’s Rotary Club premises where the programme had been organised.

Apart from the seven budding techies, Anjali Gupta, a Class XI student of Rajkamal Saraswati Vidya Mandir, Dhanbad, was also honoured with a cheque of Rs 6,000 by a local NGO Prakash during the event.

Speaking to The Telegraph, the state facilitator of Foundation for Excellence R. Prasad said the laurels were part of the foundation’s efforts to support talented-but-poor medical and engineering students in India.

The students are selected for the scholarship on during the first year of their course. The scholarship is renewed every year based on the success of the students in semester exams,” Prasad said.

He added that the eligibility criteria for applying was an aggregate of 80 per cent in Class X and Class XII. The total family income of the student should also be less than Rs 7,000 per month.

“We do a background check of all and visit their homes to verify the income of their families before selection,” Prasad, who is also the president of NGO Prakash, said.