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June 8, 2023

KGPian Arjun Menda is Providing Access to Education to Underprivileged Children in India

IITKGP Foundation 


Arjun Menda completed  his Masters of Technology (M. Tech) from IIT Kharagpur in 1958 in Product Technology and was awarded IIT Kharagpur’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2019. Arjun was born in 1933 in what is now Pakistan. His family had to flee for India during the partition leaving behind everything they had built for generations. Due to the kindness of an individual who supported Arjun with a refugee scholarship to study Engineering, Arjun completed his Bachelor’s in Engineering. Arjun ventured into the real estate business in 1980 and went on to build the empire that is RMZ Corp today. Always the visionary, he started his entrepreneurial journey in 1967 with a small-scale industry in Bengaluru and went on to be associated with several others, before setting up RMZ. Arjun and his family are now the third richest realtors in the country. 

 

Arjun's personal educational journey and his persistent commitment to education has manifested in his support for the Merit Scheme Award and the scholarship support program of the Menda Foundation. Today, the foundation grants approximately 700 scholarships annually, enabling nearly 100 students to graduate and integrate into mainstream society each year. Over the last 25 years, Arjun has funded more than 20,000 students with scholarships and provided e-learning kits to more than 2,000 schools in Karnataka. His foundation has also set up solar stations at homes and student hostels. According to the Menda foundation website their vision is as follows:  “Harnessing the power of education to create a paradigm of positive change.”  In doing this their goals are to: Provide scholarships for children from marginalized background; Equip students with solar solution through Light for Education projects; Light up hostels and schools by promoting renewable energy sources; Enhance the learning experience of the rural children through "e-Shala" projects; and  Enrich lives of undereducated adults in rural areas through the Adult Literacy Program.

 

Read more here and here.