Swayam recently embarked on a pilot to connect graduate students in need of funding with Angels who will invest in their educations in return for a share in their future income for a fixed period of time. Realizing that our model is a solution to the international student financial aid problem, Stanford University is also supporting our pilot. We have two incoming Masters students at Stanford University in our first cohort. One of them is from Pakistan, the other from India and they have been admitted to the Management Science & Engineering (MS& E) and Electrical Engineering (EE) departments respectively.

We just managed to get our Pakistani Swayam Fellow completely funded with investments from our first two Swayam Angels. He will soon be at Stanford University in the fall! We are working hard to connect with Angels interested in investing in our Indian EE student who will be unable to realize his dream of attending Stanford University without funding.

We are also excited to introduce two new advisors who are helping the Swayam team execute on its vision.

Anand Chandrasekaran is a native of Mumbai, India and a Stanford alum. In 2001, he co-founded the Silicon Valley company Aeroprise, Inc., a leader in mobility software. He is a recipient of the 2004 MIT Global Technovators award and has been featured in BusinessWeek, Business 2.0, rediff.com and Fortune. In 2006, Anand executive-produced Carma (2006), a feature-length thriller and is currently producing Tapestries of Hope (2008), a feature-length documentary to highlight the work of human rights activist Betty Makoni and the Girl Child Network (GCN) in Zimbabwe. Anand’s entrepreneurial, marketing and social venture experience is helping us grow the Swayam community.

April Rinne is Director of Microfinance Venture Development at Unitus, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing innovative, market-based solutions to global poverty by helping accelerate the growth of microfinance institutions. She also teaches a microfinance course at International Development Law Organization. April studied at Harvard Law School and worked at several law firms before joining Unitus. Her deep knowledge of legal and regulatory issues related to international microfinance is invaluable for the Swayam team.

How can you help?

• Invest in a Swayam Fellow! Do financially well by accruing returns on your investment when the Fellow starts earning and also do good by helping a student get an education he would be unable to access without you. Write to pilot@swayam.org if you are interested in being one of our first Swayam Angels! You will be able to talk with a current Swayam Angel before making a commitment.

• Connect us with graduate students who are facing funding difficulties and would benefit from a Swayam Fellowship. They will get the funding they need, won’t have to repay anything while in college and will always make payments they can afford that are aligned with their income. Ask potential Swayam Fellows to write to us at pilot@swayam.org.

• Spread the word! Link to this blog post and tell your friends about Swayam.

If you know of legal counsel who might be interested in supporting us, please write to info@swayam.org.

Labels: updates pilot advisors Fellows Angels

Our first check has come in for $5000. We hope investors will give two students a chance to get an education at Stanford.

Our website now has a funding bar showing the progress of funding received. To get more information about the students and their backgrounds, please write to pilot@swayam.org.

After a lot of work, we are ready to begin our first pilot. The last two years have seen us hit all the business plan competitions we could get our hands on. We've been encouraged by our performance and the comments and suggestions we've received so far. But it is crunch time now for us. We are really really excited about the fact that we have our first cohort of students, two of whom will not be able to come to Stanford if we don't help them.

A big breakthrough was realizing that we can get investor checks written directly to Stanford University. We don't mind staying out of the contract and not making any money ourselves for the first cohort. We'd rather focus on proving the concept for now. We have been meeting some incredibly nice people along the way - people who are inspired enough to say they'll help our pilot by becoming a Swayam Angel.

The time is short and we'll need the help of the community to fund our first three students. We'll update our website as and when we get investment toward our cohort. If you know someone who could be a Swayam Angel, please point them to our website and ask them to write to us at pilot@swayam.org.