Tomorrow’s Foundation

Tomorrow’s Foundation is an Indian NGO that began in 1990-1991 on the terrace of Mother Teresa’s Nirmal Hriday in Kalighat, Kolkata, providing non-formal education to 17 children with blessings from Mother Teresa. It was founded by Arup and Swarup Ghosh. Its mission is to act as a catalyst for positive impact in marginalised communities, helping people realise their potential through rights, protection, education and livelihood work. It currently works across education, skills and livelihood, and climate adaptation and mitigation programmes, largely concentrated in West Bengal, with some programmes reaching other states.

Major Areas of Work

• Education: closes learning gaps in primary and inclusive education, and supports out of school adolescents through open schooling.
• Skills and Livelihood: vocational training and livelihood support for youth and rural communities, including healthcare training, agriculture and natural resource based livelihoods.
• Child Protection: rehabilitation and mainstreaming support for children with special needs and disabilities.
• Climate Adaptation and Mitigation: listed as a focus area, though specific programmes are not detailed on the organisation’s site.

Major Initiatives and Programmes

• Sahajpath and Agamir Pathsala: rural primary education programmes in Birbhum district, reaching 170 school catchment areas and 18 tribal villages, teaching basic literacy and numeracy, including bilingual instruction in Santhali and Bengali.
• Enhance Primary Level Intervention (EPLI): urban primary education programme working with government schools in Kolkata, scaled from 12 schools in 2018 to 25 schools by 2021-2022.
• Charaibeti: inclusive education programme in Kolkata for children with intellectual disabilities and their mothers, delivered online.
• Project Freedom: education and employability programme for out of school adolescents across three locations in Kolkata, currently covering 658 adolescents, combining open schooling with market linked vocational skills.
• Skills@School: vocational training in government schools across Kolkata and its suburbs for youth aged 14 to 18, running since 2017.
• Healthcare Training: trains urban youth from disadvantaged backgrounds for General Duty Assistant and Home Health Aide roles, reaching over 2,200 beneficiaries and 550 families.
• Rural Livelihood Projects: a cluster of agriculture and natural resource based programmes in Birbhum and Alipurduar districts, including mushroom cultivation, kitchen gardens, banana cultivation and nutrition gardens, together reaching several thousand rural and tribal families.

Impact

Tomorrow’s Foundation reports reaching about 2.5 million beneficiaries over three decades, with a stated vision of reaching 10 million lives by 2047. During the Covid-19 pandemic (2020-2021), it ran 5 Covid hospitals, distributed dry rations to 36,000 beneficiaries, supported food security for 20,000 vulnerable families, and helped more than 100 other organisations raise funds. Between 2013 and 2015, it provided rehabilitation services to 375 children with special needs and helped mainstream 119 differently abled children into government schools. Between 2011 and 2013, a UNICEF supported child protection programme reached 125,000 children across four districts in Chhattisgarh. It received an NGO Leadership award in 2017 and became an approved Non-Funded Training Partner of the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) in 2018.

Leadership

• Swarup Ghosh, Founder and CEO
• Arup Ghosh, Founder and Member
• Anuradha Bhattacharya, President
• Santanu Banerjee, Director of Education and Child Protection

Partners HDFC Bank, UNICEF, NABARD, NSDC, Barclays, PwC Foundation, Mennonite, Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiative

Tomorrow’s Foundation suits people who want to work across a wide range of grassroots programmes, from classroom level education to rural livelihoods and disability inclusion, within one organisation. It has a long track record, running for more than three decades, with a direct lineage to its founding with Mother Teresa’s support in Kolkata. Staff get exposure to a broad mix of funders and partners, from corporate CSR programmes to UN agencies and government bodies, across education, livelihoods and child protection work.