Each year volunteers from around the world come together in a show of great human spirit, to help educate underprivileged children and support other social causes in India. Work An Hour, or WAH, as it is popularly known, is a simple concept.

We ask you to symbolically contribute one hour of your time towards the cause of children's education and other social causes by donating an hour's worth of your salary or more. The event begins on 15th July, reaches an apex on August 15, the Indian Independence Day, and finally culminates on September 15.
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Even after 60+ years of independence, 37% of Indians live below poverty line. 77% of Indians still live on less than Rs. 20 ($0.50) per day. Every proud Indian should be appalled at these numbers. Every proud Indian should be offended that so many of our brothers and sisters have to struggle every day for basic necessities of life.

Want to make a difference? Want to give underprivileged Indians a fighting chance to change their lives for the better? Join us and work an hour!

The Work An Hour campaign features 20 projects that serve the most vulnerable sections of India including orphaned girls, tribal women, disabled children, and children of landless laborers, sex-workers, and slum dwellers. Some projects also bring much needed opportunities to remote and rural parts of India.

These underprivileged Indians deserve a fair chance at getting an education and moving beyond a life of mere subsistence. Help us empower this underprivileged India! Work an hour and empower them to chase their dreams!
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100% of all funds collected through Work an Hour go directly towards the selected projects. Keeping with Asha's long-standing policy, Asha volunteers bear all administrative and operational expenses.

During WAH 2010, we raised $135,230. All the money raised was spent on the respective projects' development. For additional details, please click here [ hide answer ]

The projects being supported through Work an Hour 2010 truly represent the breadth and depth of the range of projects supported by Asha for Education in various parts of India. All the projects have:

1. An Asha chapter that has worked with the NGO/registered organization for at least the past two years.
2. A recent (within a year of March '10) site-visit report relevant to the proposal.
3. All financial reports on utilization of funds.
4. Bring education and consequently empower rural, tribal and marginalized communities.

You can learn more about them here.
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We are 4 star (highest rating) charity as evaluated by 'Charity Navigator', an independent organization evaluating charities, because of our donor policy, financial health, organizational efficiency and organizational capacity and we were first for 2 consecutive years in the Slamdunk category and Top 10 charity to watch out for. We have a zero overhead policy and every penny you donate to projects will directly go towards projects.
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Please do contact the project steward listed in the project page or the WAH team (wah@ashanet.org).

1. You can visit the projects if you are interested or explore possibilities of interning there - please contact the Internships team (internship@ashanet.org).
2. You may volunteer for Asha and be associated with the project.
3. You can be an Asha Star and fundraiser for the project - do contact the project steward for more information about our Asha Stars program.

We hope to add more information about this to our 'Get Involved' page very soon.
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You may visit the websites for Asha for Education and Work An Hour -- both are excellent repositories of information. You may also email wah@ashanet.org for more information, or if your question was not answered by our websites.
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Word of mouth publicity has been the primary reason for WAH to be successful year after year. Please do let your friends and family know about this wonderful effort. Please join WAH facebook and orkut communities and follow WAH on twitter. Here is more publicity information that you can make use of. You could also help with publicity by organizing local events to raise awareness about our projects -- there are many ways to get creative and raise funds for WAH, sky is the limit!
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You can contact you local chapter of Asha if you would like to join Asha as a volunteer. You can find the contact details on this website.
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You may make a project specific donation to one of WAH 2011's 20 projects by selecting the project of your choice from the project dropdown menu while making a donation.
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You can donate any amount. We encourage you to donate an hour's worth or more of your salary.
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In the United States, donations to Asha for Education are 100% tax deductible under IRS code section 501(c)3. In India, donations are 50% tax deductible under section 80G of the Income Tax Act of India.

In UK, donations are fully tax exempt.

In Switzerland, Asha is registered as Steuerbefreiung Vereine under Kantonales Steueramt Zurich.

All Credit card donations in US will receive an automated e-receipt and we will provide you a paper receipt if you request one. All check donations will receive a paper receipt.
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Please email wah@ashanet.org for assistance.
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Matching donations is a charitable practice where an organization (typically the donor's employer) pledges to give an equal (or some proportianal) amount of money to certain charities registered with them (Asha could be on this list). The practice of matching donations thus doubles (or proportionately increases) the amount that Asha for Education receives.
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A lot of companies match donations made by their employees. An incomplete list of companies can be found here. If your employer is not on the list, please contact your HR department to find out if your company matches employee donations and let us know so we can add your company's name to our list.

After you make a donation to Asha, please do the following:

• Obtain a matching donation form from your employer's HR dept. (In some companies, you will not need to have to deal with any paper forms, in which case there will be an online alternative, and we will be notified of your donation by email. Please check with your HR department how it works in your company.)
• Fill out the matching form and mail it to us (if within the US) at
  
  
  WAH 2011 (Matching Funds)
  Asha for Education
  P.O. Box 322
  New York, NY. 10040
  
  If you're employed outside the US, please have your matching form mailed to the address provided for mailing checks in your country (see above).
• We will verify your donation, attach our non-profit organization certificate and send it back to your employer.
• Your employer will send us a check for the amount that is matched.
• If your company is registered with us, all you need to do is fill out your company's matching donation form.
• Also, please drop an email to wah@ashanet.org with your name, company and the address where the check will be sent if its not the above, so that we can keep a tab on your check and intimate you once we get it.

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Canadian Residents: Donate via Canadahelps.

UK Residents: Donate via JustGiving.

In all other countries, please use the donation page provided on this website. Note that the WAH website accepts donations only in USD. If you live outside the US (e.g. India), your credit card should be capable of handling transactions in USD. Also note that you will need to manually convert the amount you are donating to USD and enter it in the amount field. Your credit card company will bill you in your local currency. You may be charged an international currency transaction fee by your credit card provider though.

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UK tax laws allow the donations made to a registered charity (Asha is one) to be tax exempt. This means that the donors can claim the tax back on the amount they have donated to Asha, at the time of filing their tax returns. But since not everyone needs to file a tax return, it would be a cumbersome process for most users to file a tax return just to reclaim tax on donations.

JustGiving streamlines this process by automatically claiming 28% tax back on any donations made to charity, so that the charity gets a higher amount. This means that donors can actually donate a smaller amount, taking into account the tax that Asha would be getting back: e.g., if a UK taxpayer wants to give $100 to Asha, they only need donate $78.25 through JustGiving for Asha to get $100. For higher rate taxpayers, JustGiving provides a donation receipt online, which they can print off and attach to their tax-return in order to reclaim the difference between tax reclaimed by JustGiving (28%), and the rate at which they pay tax. Please refer to the Donate page at JustGiving for more information.
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Asha for Education Canada is the Canadian arm of Asha for Education, and is a registered charitable organization in Canada. Therefore, Canadian donors will automatically receive a tax-receipt when they make their credit-card donations directly through our online donation portal at Canadahelps.org (a public charitable foundation that provides convenient online donation services to thousands of registered Canadian charities, for a low 3% transaction fee).

Donors residing in Canada, who wish to have a tax-receipt for when they file their income tax returns with Canadian Revenue Agency, are being asked to use a donation website specifically set-up by Asha for Education Canada. Donors who donate at the Canadian donation website will be able to select or specify the WAH 2011 project to which they want to donate.
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Depending on which part of the world you are in, please see below accordingly for the address to mail your checks (cheques). Please also note that your check (cheque) must be drawn in favor of "Asha" in India, "Asha for Education Canada" in Canada and "Asha for Education" everywhere else. Either in the check memo, or on an accompanying sheet of paper, clearly mention that the donation is for WAH 2011, and also include any project and/or chapter affiliation that you wish to make.

USA:	Asha for Education PO Box 1287 Princeton, NJ 08542 Make checks payable to "Asha for Education".
India:	Asha for Education c/o Mr. Bhaskar Venkateswaran 19/17 Veenus Apartments Venus Colony 2nd Street, Alwarpet, Chennai 600 018 Make cheques payable to "Asha".
UK:	Asha for Education 100 D Breakspears Road Brockley, London SE4 1UD, UK Make cheques payable to "Asha for Education".
Canada:	Asha for Education c/o Nimish Bhatnagar 403 Everton Drive Mississauga, ON L5R 1W6 Canada Make checks payable to "Asha for Education Canada".

If you wish to send a check from any other country, please email us.
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Yes, below are listed some of the accounts you can transfer to. If you use bank transfer, please send us an email notifying us about the details of the donation (amount, date, any project affiliation) at wah@ashanet.org. This is very important!

Switzerland:	Bank: UBS, Zurich In favor of: Asha Zurich Address: Ackersteinstrasse 133, 8049 Zurich Account Number: 206-259021.40Q Clearance Number: 206 IBAN:CH29 0020 6206 2590 2140 Q BIC/SWIFT:UBSWCHZH80A
India:	Please fill out this form to get EFT details for India

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