What can one rupee a day do for a student? Ten years ago, a small charitable trust in Pune set out to find the answer, and today it can point to 397 students who have it in their own lives.
The Power of One Educational Trust says it has provided more than ₹41 lakh in educational assistance to academically capable young people from families that could not easily afford college. The total is large. The stories behind it are larger.
A Question Small Enough to Answer
The trust was registered in 2016, and its website went live on October 11 of that year. Pune residents Prasad Narayan and Rekha Krishnan founded it as a nonprofit educational charitable trust. Its purpose has remained the same from the start. It helps students from low-income families who have the marks to study further and lack the money to do so.
Narayan had watched young people leave college because their families could not pay. Some took jobs early to support their households and gave up the chance of a degree, along with the better prospects that usually follow one. Admission to a college does not mean a student can finish the course. Good marks can open the door, and poverty can still shut it again.
The trust’s answer was modest. A rupee a day comes to ₹365 a year for one contributor. The organization argued that giving should not belong only to wealthy donors, companies or large institutions. Ordinary people could take part if the amount was small enough and the habit steady enough. Few would notice ₹365 leaving their pockets over a year. Gathered from a whole community, it becomes tuition.
The name carries the idea. One is the rupee, but it is also the donor, the volunteer, the student, and the decision to step in before hardship ends a course of study.
What a Fee Receipt Can Change
The trust has supported students in engineering, law, commerce, economics, computer science, physics, chemistry, microbiology, and other subjects. They have studied at Savitribai Phule Pune University, the Pune Institute of Computer Technology, Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Fergusson College, the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, IIT Dhanbad and other colleges and universities.
Think of a family already juggling rent, food, medical bills and the schooling of more than one child. For them, an unpaid semester fee can look like a wall. A student who has cleared every hurdle to reach a good institution may be forced to leave over a sum that others spend without a second thought. Support at that moment keeps a hard-won admission alive. It also protects something harder to measure: the chance to plan a future on one’s own terms.
Each of the 397 students stands for a separate worry. A tuition installment falls due. A parent has irregular income. A family livelihood runs into trouble. A younger brother or sister also needs fees paid. Behind it all sits the fear of taking on debt.
Counting the Years and the Students
The trust’s public records show steady growth. By October 2023, it reported having sponsored 274 students. A 2025 profile cited more than 327 students and tuition fees above ₹30 lakh. The anniversary figures of 397 students and over ₹41 lakh are the latest step in that climb.
Totals only go so far. The results that matter show up later. A student finishes a degree that once looked unaffordable. A graduate gets a job and steadies the household. Someone becomes the first in the family to enter a profession. In some homes, one student’s education changes what the next generation believes it can aim for.
The trust’s anniversary documentary lets former beneficiaries speak for themselves. One became an assistant professor after a postgraduate course in international business economics and finance at the Gokhale Institute. Another became a criminal lawyer. Others recall studying while their parents earned little, while work was uncertain, or while several children needed help at once.
Fee support looks like a plain payment on paper. In practice, it buys time. A student can finish the course, build skills, gain confidence, and look for work without circumstances they did not create pushing them into a narrower choice.
How the Money Is Handled
The trust says it works without any commercial or profit motive and that its funds and income go only to charitable educational purposes in India. Its website lists Prasad Narayan as President and Managing Trustee and Rekha Krishnan as Secretary and Executive Director.
Selection considers academic merit and financial need. According to the trust’s FAQ, aid is tied to academic performance, and funding can stop if a recipient does not meet the expected standard.
Donors receive beneficiaries’ names, tuition fees paid, and college and course details, along with regular student updates. The stated aim is direct and traceable support for education. Donors want proof that their money reached its target, and this practice provides it. Students gain as well. Aid that depends on attendance, progress and continued effort tells a young person that someone considers them capable, responsible and worth the investment.
No large staff supports all this. Supporters and well-wishers carry the work, treating education as a shared concern. That makes the trust as much about taking part as giving.
A Debt Paid Forward
The most hopeful part of the story may be what happens afterward. In the anniversary documentary, one beneficiary says they began giving back after taking a job, remembering the help they had received during a hard time.
That gesture shows the longer shape of educational aid. A student who was helped can then help the next one. Not every beneficiary can donate, and gratitude should never be measured in rupees. Still, passing on an opportunity through mentoring, encouragement, advice, or a small contribution turns a single act of help into a cycle.
That is the real power of one. Many people decide that another person’s education is worth protecting, and the effect adds up.
India’s hopes for higher education cannot depend only on what families can pay when a fee falls due. Talent is spread widely across the country. Money is not. The gap between the two is where trusts like this one try to work.
A rupee a day may sound like a token in a time of rising college costs. A token can still do real work once it becomes a habit. Ten years of steady effort, careful checking and attention to detail show that a small idea can carry weight.
The Next Ten Years
The Power of One now enters its 11th year. 397 students received timely help with their studies. Many more have futures hanging on a missed deadline, a crisis at home, or the lack of one well-timed offer of help.
The task ahead involves more than raising the head count. The trust aims to strengthen its ties with former students, record their stories, build networks of mentors and bring more people in as partners in educational opportunity.
Ten years ago the trust asked what one rupee a day could do. Today its answer is 397 young people who had a fairer chance to learn, graduate, and build futures of their own.
One rupee looks small, and one student looks like a single story. Steady giving can change what is possible. Sometimes it begins with one decision to help one person stay in college.
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