Azim Premji Foundation, which received a boost after its founder Azim Premji announced an increase in philanthropic commitment by $7.5 billion, plans to set up a university in north India and scale up its network of institutions at the district and state levels to improve school education system on a continued and sustained basis.
The philanthropy’s field-work has been in some of the most disadvantaged parts of the country to improve the quality and equity of public (government) system. All this work has been in partnership with various state governments.
“The field work is spread across Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Puducherry, Telangana, and Madhya Pradesh along with some work in the northeastern states,” ANI quoted a senior foundation official said on Thursday. The IT giant-Wipro’s chairman, on Wednesday, announced that he will set apart $21 million for philanthropy, making Azim Premji foundation one of the biggest foundations in the world.
With the new endowment corpus of Rs 1.45 lakh crore, the Azim Premji Foundation in India has an overarching vision to contribute to developing a just, equitable, humane, and sustainable society.
“In the past five years, these grants have supported more than 150 organisations engaged in a range of domains. Over the next several years, the activities are expected to scale up significantly,” said the official.
The foundation has also set up Azim Premji University in Bangalore in 2010 to develop outstanding professionals in education and other related areas of human development. “The team driving the field work will go up from the current 1,600 people, while the university will expand to have 5,000 students with 400 faculty members across multiple programmes,” ANI reported.
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