The Asha Kendra Hope Center (AKHC) is a career counseling, vocational training, and educational resource center for rural young adults in Jaipur, India. Exclusively funded by the Georgetown University South Asian Society, this non-profit consists of an on-site director Dr. Awadh Prasad and three full-time, on-site employees aiding 290+ students per year in community of 15,000 people. From its inception in 2001 to April of 2006, the project was a division of a larger South Asian development organization called Awakening Hope. Awakening Hope was founded in 2001 by then-SAS-president Vinoda Basnayake and then-SAS-member Atif Ansar. In order to return involvement to current Georgetown students, in the Spring of 2006, the AKHC Board commenced the Hope Center’s spin off from Awakening Hope to Georgetown SAS. Currently, the AKHC Board is transitioning oversight of the project’s public relations, human resources, financial management, legal issues, and progress reports to Georgetown SAS.
The mission of the AKHC rests on acknowledging the reality and prevailing over the obstacles facing the pursuit of sustainable development in the developing regions of India. International development has largely focused on promoting primary and secondary education. However, primary and secondary education will only lead to sustainable development when the educated are connected with social entrepreneurship skills and employability. That reality is manifested in rural villages outside of Jaipur, which have witnessed the exodus of educated young Indians to the overcrowded city in the fruitless search of jobs. The long-term goals of the project include expanding the facility’s resources to aid more youth, creating a tertiary education program with local students and local universities in Jaipur, and establishing a community-based learning program in Jaipur for Georgetown students in association with the Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service’s International Development Certificate program and the Georgetown University Center for Social Justice.
For more information on AKHC, please visit the
Awakening Hope Homepage.
For general inquiries, please contact:
Anita Rao
Philanthropy & Public Relations Chair
ar92@georgetown.edu
