Times of India
22 January 2009
By: Nitin Brahme

An NGO has created a Revolving Bank Guarantee for needy students that will take care of the heavy financial investment needed for seeking vocational training

For providing better education to needy students, Avinash Gawai and his Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) – Centre For Human Development has created a Revolving Bank Guarantee (RBG) project. Speaking about the need of this project,

Gawai says, “Heavy financial investment is necessary for seeking advance education or professional training in respective fields. The tuition fee, costs of textbooks, equipments and other academic resources, costs of living in metros where such educational facilities are available add to the total expenditure. The candidates, though meritorious, don’t have an easy access to educational loans because there is nothing with them that can stand as guarantee against the loan. Hence the bankers or credit agencies hesitate to grant educational loans to such candidates.”

Hence, it is proposed that a corpus be established by corporates as a part of their Corporate Social Responsibility as well as from donors who have already been selected by well-known educational institutions. Such institutions have placement / campus selection services, and the enrolled students are often picked up by well-known companies for high paying positions even before the completion of studies. Hence, repayment of loan is always assured.

Upon repayment of loan, the candidates can contribute a small amount to the corpus as a token of gratitude so that the corpus keeps growing or at least retains its value in the face of inflation and depreciation. The Bank Guarantee against a loan will cover the tuition fees and allied expenses as well as the living cost during the studies. Thus corpus will be used again and again for every new student and that’s why the name ‘Revolving Bank Guarantee.’

Special tie-ups will be done with the institutions, which conduct professional courses. He added that the corpus will be in a Nationalised Bank. Gawai told, “V B Foundation has given Rs 11 lakh for the corpus on Monday and our project has started.”