In honor of International Women's Day, Michigan State University Students Advancing International Development will host a bake sale and information session at The Rock on Farm Lane to benefit the Aakkam Revolving Scholarship Fund for rural girls in India. The event is slated for March 20.
Shanti Ashram's Aakkam Revolving Scholarship Fund currently supports nine young women from five villages in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. Students Advancing International Development ¹s goal for the 2012-13 school year is to raise enough money to expand the initiative to support 20 women from 10 villages. This will entail raising more than $6,500.
Each beneficiary and her family pay back the scholarship loan in monthly installments at an 8 percent diminishing interest rate (much more affordable than paying the amount in full). In turn, an ongoing fund is developed to help more vulnerable young women attend high school or college.
Each year, MSU Students Advancing International Development selects an initiative from Shanti Ashram to sponsor. The first initiative was an MMR vaccination project aiming to help achieve community immunity against measles in the fall of 2009.
MSU Students Advancing International Development chose the Aakkam Revolving Scholarship Fund as its 2013 fund-raising project with the goal of empowering and providing opportunity for young women.
For more information about MSU SAID or Shanti Ashram, visit www.msusaid.org or contact Dan Dutkiewicz at dutkiew1@msu.edu.