Everest

About Team Everest

Team Everest is a non-profit organization founded and managed by Karthee Vidya since 2006. Team Everest recently completed 15 years and is still in operation. Their primary focus area is promoting volunteering and providing education.

They are a team that is crazy about volunteering. Team Everest believes in the power of endless love every person has and wants to tap that potential to make a difference in this world.

Creating volunteering opportunities and providing scholarships to financially poor students are the key activities of Team Everest.

Visit their website to know more about them.

Team Everest is a family of 25,000+ volunteers touching and impacting the lives of 40,000 children every year.

Vision of Team Everest

Team Everest’s vision is, “To inspire everyone to volunteer.”

They work every day imagining the day where we will have a world full of volunteers. The day where volunteering becomes a coffee table discussion!

Founder’s Story

One man, one dream, and one decision are what made Team Everest. What started as helping 40 rural kids has grown to touch 40,000 children every year.

15 years ago, Karthee Vidya started Team Everest NGO with a vision to make everyone volunteer.

This is a story of how a single man’s dream is changing many lives!

Karthee – The school boy!

Karthee was born and brought up in Arni, a small town in Thiruvannamalai District in Tamilnadu, India.

He did his 7th to 10th std in a school in rural place where he came across many students from financially poor background. Karthee often recollects about one of his friends, who struggled to get even a long size notebook, which costed just Rs 25.

Karthee in a new school

In 10th grade, Karthee scored good marks. So, his mother borrowed money and put him into the best private school in Chennai to score good marks during his 12th grade.

Karthee found that many of his new school friends were from well to do families which is a complete contrast to the kind of people he met in his old rural school.

Also, the quality of education he got in the new school was 100-200 times better than what he got in his rural school.

The Spark

The fact that only privileged children can get the best education broke Karthee’s heart.

He always says, “If you have money, you get one kind of education. If you don’t, you get a different one altogether”.

He believes every child deserves equal access to education irrespective of their background.

Karthee’s volunteering journey: The beginning

In his 11th and 12th, Karthee was in hostel, so he could not do much about his volunteering thirst.

In 2002, he joined Metallurgy Engineering in Salem. In his 4 years of college, Karthee volunteered locally. From old age home to orphanages, he was helping in every way he could.

In his final year in 2006, he was campus recruited by Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS), an IT company.

Karthee’s First Salary

Karthee joined Cognizant in Aug, 2006 and got his first salary on Aug 30, 2006.

He decided to give part of his salary to educate children. He also reached out to 3 of his friends and raised Rs 4000. They went to a village called ‘Sirumoor’ in Tamil Nadu. There they identified children and gave them uniforms, notebooks, and dictionaries.

This was the first activity of Team Everest.

Karthee quits his high paying Job

Ever since that first activity, Karthee never stopped volunteering until this second. He continued doing many activities from thereon.

During his Cognizant days, he had to manage both office and Team Everest work.

To balance both, Karthee spent his time before and after office hours, weekends for volunteering. He used to work like 12 to 15 hours a day to manage both the work.

Precisely after 100 months, on Dec 31, 2014, Karthee quit his high paying IT job to take up volunteering full time.

The Rise of Team Everest 2.0

Till 2014, Team Everest had no employees and office. Everything was managed only with the help of volunteers.

From Jan-1, 2015, Karthee gradually started building a team, thus the birth of Team Everest 2.0.

Today, Team Everest has around 25 full-time employees and 25,000+ active volunteers working towards the dream of making everyone volunteer.

The impacts of Team Everest

Currently, Team Everest is helping 40,000 children every year.

We provide scholarships to school, college, and rural students. Pre pandemic, we were doing a school adoption program where we gave uniforms, books, and infrastructure support to aid quality education to children.

We also ran a digital literacy program through which 5500 students learned computers every day.

We also do English & soft skills classes for students. Since the start of the Pandemic, we converted all our volunteering opportunities into virtual. We currently have 25 different volunteering options, where volunteers teach crucial skills like creativity and problem-solving. We also help students learn life skills, moral values, financial literacy, and much more. In 2020 alone, we have engaged 10000+ volunteers. In 2021, we have already crossed the 10k mark with a month to go.

Team Everest is recognized as ‘Leader in Volunteer Engagement,’ a unique award that only 1 NGO in India can receive in a year.

Promoting Volunteering

The driving force in Team Everest is our vision to promote volunteering. To achieve this mission, we have launched several on field volunteering and virtual volunteering opportunities. We have volunteering opportunities for both adults and children.

Black board painting – Volunteers paint the boards of Government school in and around Chennai.
Gift Painting – Volunteers paint empty pen stands with motivational slogans, quotes, or inspring designs. We will award these pen stands to deserving students. ****
Speak Out – Volunteers teach Spoken English to students via phone for 40 days.

Likewise we have numerous Adult volunteering oportunities, check them here . Due to covid, we are currently not doing any field volunteering but we are continuously making difference through virtual volunteering options.

Hello India – We connect Indian college students with NRI teens over the phone and let them have conversations about culture, lifestyle. We provide curriculum too.

Similarly, we have a lot of volunteering opportunities exclusive for children. Anyone from age 3 can volunteer. Check out the children volunteering acts Here

Providing Scholarship

We do a scholarship initiative called ‘I am the Change.’ Through this, we sponsor the complete under graduation of financially poor students. We launched this scholarship in 2016 and so far we have sponsored 850 students overall. Our scholars are pursuing their degrees in Arts, Engineering, Law, and Medical background.

We have an 8 step selection process in place, through which, we find and give scholarships to only deserving students.

We offer the following as part of the scholarship.

Financial Support

The Scholar will get a maximum of Rs. 30,000 per year towards their college fee.

Skill Development

We will give 100+ hours of skill training programs every year for all our students.

Internship Opportunities

We will provide an opportunity to intern with a corporate or startup during any 30 days of the year.

Job Opportunities

Many corporate companies are partners with us and sponsor some of our scholarship students. We facilitate job interviews for our final year students with these companies. We also reach other corporate companies and arrange job interviews for our students.

I am the change Scholarship Stats