Our mission
To place a book, a desk and a working library within reach of every child in a government school in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, and to keep that child in school until Class 10.
Loading page…
Who we are
About us
Who we are, and why we work inside government schools.
About us
A shelf worth walking to
Akshara Spoorthi Foundation is a public charitable trust working with government schools across rural Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. In Telugu, akshara means letter and spoorthi means inspiration — we believe the first follows from the second.
We began in 2016 by carrying a tempo-load of story books to a single Mandal Parishad Primary School in Wardhannapet. Today we run a year-round programme of school libraries, learning materials, digital literacy labs, merit scholarships and health camps.
We work only inside the government school system, alongside headmasters, Mandal Education Officers and School Management Committees. Every distribution is counted, acknowledged in writing and reported in our audited accounts.
12
Schools adopted
169+
Children supported
27
Villages reached
Our vision
A Telugu-speaking countryside where a child’s postcode no longer decides whether she learns to read — where every village school has a shelf worth walking to.
ప్రతి అక్షరం ఒక స్ఫూర్తి
Every letter, an inspiration
How we work
Our approach
Four commitments shape every school we work with.
Humanitarian
We start from the child in front of us — the girl who walks four kilometres to school, the boy who reads his first full sentence in Class 5.
Professional
Needs assessments, stock registers, termly reading assessments and audited accounts. Good intentions are no substitute for good records.
Impartial
Support goes where the need is greatest, regardless of caste, religion, gender or politics. Where resources are scarce, we prioritise girls.
Respect
For teachers, for families and for children’s privacy. No photograph of a child is published without written, revocable guardian consent.
In the schools
Moments from the field
Every photograph of a child here is published with written, time-limited consent from a parent or guardian.
Assembly before the book distribution at a mandal parishad primary school. Reading hour at an upper primary school in Warangal district. Digital literacy session, Classes 8 and 9. Colour-coded shelving by reading level — the children maintain it themselves. Corporate volunteering day with the Southbridge Analytics team. The approach road to a habitation school in Adilabad district. Scholarship award ceremony at the district collectorate auditorium.
Our journey
How we got here, year by year
Every entry is something you can point at — a school, a registration, a partnership.
A tempo full of books
Four hundred second-hand story books driven from Hyderabad to MPPS Kothapally in Wardhannapet mandal, Warangal. No registration, no bank account, no plan beyond that afternoon.
400 books, 1 school
Registered as a public charitable trust
Trust deed registered at Serilingampally, and 12A registration granted the following year. The first audited accounts covered a total income of ₹2,80,000.
5 schools
The eyesight discovery
A reading assessment in Khammam turned up a cluster of children who could read letters but not words. Twenty-three of 148 had uncorrected refractive error. The health camp programme started that month.
23 pairs of spectacles
First school adopted
MPPS Ibrahimpur in Siddipet became the first school under a full three-year adoption: water, toilets, furniture, boundary wall and a library.
1 school adopted
Merit scholarships begin
Eleven students from government schools received scholarships to continue into intermediate, in a year when the pandemic had closed everything else.
11 scholars
80G renewal and the first CSR partner
Fresh 80G and CSR-1 registration under the new regime, and the first corporate CSR agreement — uniforms for Warangal district.
₹9,80,000 raised
Digital Literacy Labs launched
The lab specification — refurbished machines, an inverter, offline content — was written after visiting eleven schools whose donated computers had died.
1 lab, 6 machines
Ten thousandth child
The ten-thousandth child reached directly since 2016, across nineteen schools and seven districts.
10,000 children
MPPS Ibrahimpur graduates
The gram panchayat voted the library, water purifier service and sanitation maintenance onto its own annual budget. The first school to graduate out of the adoption programme.
1st graduation
Twenty-seven schools, eleven districts
The register now covers twenty-four schools across nine Telangana districts and three in Andhra Pradesh, with nineteen libraries running and four digital labs.
27 schools
The people
Who is accountable for this
A small team and a board that meets every quarter. If something goes wrong, these are the people who answer for it.
Sudhakar Vemula
Founder & Managing Trustee
Left a fifteen-year career in supply chain management in 2016 after a weekend visit to a school in Wardhannapet that had four books in the building. Handles programme strategy and, still, most of the driving.
Justice (Retd.) B. Venkat Rao
Trustee & Chair, Safeguarding
Retired district judge. Chairs the safeguarding committee, reviews every escalated child-protection matter, and wrote the first draft of our consent form.
Dr. Radhika Narsingoju
Trustee & Medical Adviser
Consultant paediatrician in Hyderabad. Supervises the health camp protocol and the referral pathway into the PHC network, and has argued us out of two well-meaning and medically useless ideas.
Anitha Bandaru
Chief Operating Officer
Former district programme manager with a state literacy mission. Owns operations, the safeguarding function and the uncomfortable question of whether an intervention is actually working.
Our partners
Nobody does this on their own
Companies, foundations, government departments and colleges that fund this work and open doors for it.
Vaishnavi Infotech Pvt Ltd (opens in a new tab)
Godavari Cements Limited (opens in a new tab)
Deccan Pharma Industries Ltd (opens in a new tab)
The Rangaraju Family Foundation (opens in a new tab)
Pratham Books (opens in a new tab)
Kakatiya Textiles Pvt Ltd (opens in a new tab)
Southbridge Analytics India Pvt Ltd (opens in a new tab)
Samagra Shiksha, Government of Telangana (opens in a new tab)
Accountability
Registered, audited and checkable
Our accounts are audited every year and published in full, and every registration number is printed so you can check it on the government’s own portal before you give.
See our finances and reports- Section 12ALapsed 31 Mar 2026
- AAATA1234FE20214
- Section 80GLapsed 31 Mar 2026
- AAATA1234FF20219
- CSR-1In force
- CSR00028416
- FCRAValid until 31 Mar 2027
- 010240118
Let’s build a literate tomorrow
Volunteer with us
Run a Saturday reading hour, catalogue a school library or help at a book distribution. Give a few hours; a child keeps the habit for life.