U&I Trust

U&I Trust is a registered charity that describes itself as volunteer-run. It works to empower disadvantaged children and individuals across India. Ajit Sivaram and Satish Manchikanti founded it in 2011. Its work rests on two programmes. U&I Teach is an after-school learning programme for children from marginalised homes, and U&I Care supports people with special needs living in state-run homes. The organisation recruits, trains and supports large numbers of volunteers to deliver this work. Its campaigns run under the call to #BeTheChange.

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Headquarters: Bangalore, Karnataka, India

Major Areas of Work

• Education: After-school tuition, English, reading and life skills for children from marginalised communities, so that they stay in school.

• Disability and special needs care: Education, therapy, hygiene, healthcare and vocational training for residents of government-run homes.

• Youth transition: Practical life skills for young people in shelter homes as they prepare to leave care at 18.

• Volunteer mobilisation: Recruiting and training individual, college and corporate volunteers for social action.

• Social awareness and action: Programmes for schools, colleges and companies built around the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the environment and wellness.

Major Initiatives and Programmes

• U&I Teach: An after-school programme that places two volunteer teachers with a small group of four to five students, teaching English, Mathematics, Science, Social Science, Commerce and Economics.

• U&I Care: Care services in four state-run homes in Bangalore for men, women and children with special needs, covering physical, cognitive, hygiene and social-emotional development, delivered with the government.

• Life-Influencing Functional Training (LIFT): Students in shelter homes join at 15 and learn practical life skills, with support continuing through their education until they earn a middle-class income.

• Corporate Volunteering: More than 65 in-person and virtual volunteering activities across education, environment, wellness and awareness, with logistics, facilitation and an impact report handled by U&I.

• Ignite: A free, module-based social awareness and action programme for schools, run by U&I facilitators during school hours. Students who complete it receive a certificate.

U&I Teach is the flagship programme. Its learning centres combine academic tuition with an English programme that starts from a pre-assessment and has Pre Primary and Primary levels. They also run weekly guided reading, a life-skills curriculum of nine modules, and counselling from professional counsellors. Students also get career days, field trips, library access and medical camps. Volunteers commit 2.5 hours a week for the school year and can earn a volunteering certification. Lesson plans and resources sit in a digital library, and a student and class tracking portal built with Mindtree Foundation supports assessments.

Impact

U&I's homepage states it has reached 65,000 beneficiaries with 30,000 volunteers across 39 cities. Its Teach and CSR pages cite 120 learning centres in 40 cities, and its college page cites 39 cities and 962 partner colleges. Its corporate volunteering page reports more than 65,790 volunteers engaged and 146,370 volunteer hours. Through U&I Care it states it supports 180 special needs men and women, 62 destitute boys with special needs and 23 abandoned children, with 20 full-time staff. It works with corporate partners including Visa, Amazon, Thomson Reuters, Bosch, Cisco and Hitachi, and it holds GuideStar India and CAF Vetted certification.

Leadership

• Ajit Sivaram, Co-founder

• Satish Manchikanti, Co-founder

U&I suits people who want hands-on work in education, disability care and volunteer management at national scale. Its teams include Teach, which covers volunteer recruitment and expansion into new cities, and Empower, which covers corporate volunteering, reporting and fundraising. HR, Finance, and a marketing team called Rise make up the rest. This gives staff exposure to programme delivery, partnerships and communications. The organisation states it is certified as one of the top 10 NGOs to work for by Great Place To Work. Its hiring process includes a conversation with the co-founders.