Rishi Muralimohan
Hindush Foundation
March 2021
Achieving inclusive education and holistic support
- An interview with Mr. Rishi Muralimohan, Founder of Hindush Foundation
The act of being philanthropic and giving back to society was always well inscribed within Mr. Rishi Muralimohan’s heart. Having spent over five years in New Zealand, he realized through his own eyes that being philanthropic was well entrenched into its society. He believed that his experience of 30 years in Indian corporate sector, lessons learnt from New Zealand and his generous and humble attitude towards giving back to society led him to eventually create the Hindush Foundation in 2015. The Hindush Foundation is non-for-profit organization aimed at providing solutions towards education, health and environmental protection.
"Charity begins from home."
The idea of launching his own foundation came only after Rishi took the self-initiative to walk up to the Madh Municipal School, located on Madh Island, Mumbai. He noticed that the school, which was constructed over 140 years ago, was in a dire need to overall improvement and renovation. Within a matter of months, he completely revamped the school and transformed it into a much more welcoming school. This included repainting the entire school, providing adequate infrastructure for students such as chairs and tables, repairing the lights, water pump and even equipped the staff with computers and other necessary electronic products. This was just the start of a journey he had never perceived before.
The Hindush Foundation believes that the mantra for their success is based on three principles: credibility, sustainability and responsibility. After working on the Madh Municipal School and officially launching the Hindush Foundation, moved on to digitalizing a school in Palghar. They are now on the path towards renovating and refining the standard and quality of education throughout multiple schools in India. However, their impact has now diversified from education to health and environmental protection. This includes regular health check-ups of students, long term medical assistance and engages students to participate in activities such as beach clean ups.
Like with many non-for-profit organizations, receiving funds and finance has been a slight challenge for the foundation. The foundation continues to receive donations, CSR funds and other sources to finance their projects. “When giving donations, donors would prefer seeing their money spent on physical items such as benches, blackboards or fixing a new roof as opposed to increasing the fees of existing staff or for administrative support”, said Rishi in the interview.
Rishi also believes in the act of ‘holistic support’. Through this act, he has started to support a set of individual students from an underprivileged background to help them achieve their dreams and passion. This includes supporting children from their schooling years until the time they graduate university. This not only includes financial support but he acts as a mentor and goes beyond his way to support them to become strong and level-headed individuals. The Foundation intends to use his personal and professional experience to mentor, nurture and eventually transform these children into becoming active members of society.
The Hindush Foundation is in for the long run. Rishi and his team are on the path of creating a true impact through improving the overall quality of education in India. He is actively working on improving a total of five schools and is on the path of launching the Hindush ECO School, which is being built from the ground up. To quote Mahamtha Gandhi, Rishi is an exemplary individual as he is bringing the change he wishes to see in the world.
If you wish to learn more about the Hindush Foundation, click here. And if you wish to contribute towards community development and participate in various initiatives undertaken by the foundation, write to hindushfoundation@gmail.com