Trustee and founder member Jayant Shroff, who was in Mumbai recently, said Share and Care began with a simple project of sending two cartons of used clothes for the poor. The old clothes donation has now grown into one of its largest programmes. He says the foundation has concentrated on rural youth, funding scholarships for them and helping them live self-reliant and dignified lives. ``Our strategic thrust is to focus on integrated development between the ages of 15 and 21 and children between ages three and 14,'' he says.

Share and Care has achieved this through student sponsorship programmes, wherein NRIs have sponsored the education of 1,800 deaf, mentally challenged andblind students during the past 15 years. Each students has been given scholarship amounts ranging between $50 and $150.

Another scholarship programme, started in 1994, has a fund of $1,000 each for 20 undergraduate students and one $5,000 award for a medical student. ``For children without a home and family, we provide full educational and living expenses,'' says Shroff.

Share and Care also has many one-year vocational courses. The programme has been designed to help students who are high school dropouts or those whose skills do not match the conventional educational system, says Shroff. After the vocational training, Share and Care also tries to make sure that the youth find jobs. ``We estimate that a one-time expense of $300 from our members can bring about a profound change in a person's life,'' says Shroff.

``There was one unemployed youth who barely earned Rs 1,000 per annum. After we sponsored a year-long electrician's course for him, he got a job at a government chemical plant for an annualsalary of Rs 36,000,'' says Shroff. The benefits of a one-year vocational programme multiplies exponentially and as one child receives education and becomes the primary breadwinner in the family, he begins to influence his family members, his society and future generations, says Shroff.

Share and Care will now be handling the recent scholarship endowment from Lucent Technologies of $5,00,000 to fund such youth and children.Share and Care also sponsors health programmes in various parts of the country. Shroff says the NRIs have donated approximately $1,500,000 worth of medical equipment to 400 institutes in the country. The NGO has also held cataract camps in rural areas, in which over 4,000 senior citizens have benefitted from operations.

Share and Care also sponsors full treatment expenditure of 300 TB patients annually and hold four polio camps each year.

It has started a mid-day meal scheme in Orissa, where 250 school-children in a remote hill district benefit from the programme. ``The annual expensefor providing lunch to these children is $10 per student per year. For just three pennies per day, we could change the life of a child and the future of his education and livelihood as most of these children were otherwise living on one meal a day,'' says Shroff.

Share and Care has also introduced projects like awards for rural teachers in the pre-primary and primary sectors, training for homeless youth to survive and merge with the mainstream, encouragement for the teaching of science in rural areas, sponsorship of correction surgeries for polio afflicted children and education of children working in farms during the day in afternoon and evening schools to eliminate child labour on farms.