Sprott Alumni, Enhancing the Lives of Women and Girls in India, Receives the Sprott Alumni Award for Good Business

Raju Agarwal (BCom/93) is this year’s recipient of the Sprott Alumni Award for Good Business, which recognizes a Carleton University graduate of a degree program in business who has made a positive impact in local, regional or global communities through their professional, voluntary or philanthropic endeavours.

Raju Agarwal is the founder and CEO of OneProsper International, a Canadian registered charity that empowers women in India to break the cycle of poverty.

While leading a successful career in IT management for the banking and financial sectors in Canada and the US, Raju’s purpose became clear to him during a visit to India. There, he met a young girl and asked her why she wasn’t in school. She told him she wanted to, but she had to take care of her baby brother while her mother worked.

This interaction made Raju realize the many challenges preventing girls in India from getting an education. Money alone wouldn’t solve the problem; the solution required a holistic approach to address all of the barriers to education for girls . From this, OneProsper was born.

OneProsper International focuses its work in the Thar Desert, a region in India where girls have the lowest literacy rates. In addition to providing school supplies, tuition funds and transportation, such as bicycles, One Prosper provides many other supports to empower women and girls.

For example, girls and young women in the Thar Desert spend up to 7 hours a day collecting water so OneProsper builds rainwater harvesting tanks to give girls the time to go to school. Each tank is inscribed with the mother’s name to share the message that women are important.

OneProsper provides training, seeds and tools for farming to ensure women and their families have proper nutrition and a source of income. OneProsper also delivers an English Learning Buddy Program that pairs North American high school student volunteers with girls in India to practice and develop their English language skills.

High school students in Canada and the US are provided with a 10-week curriculum to use with the girls in India. Many volunteers develop close relationships with their buddies and stay in contact after the end of the program. The program started with 20 volunteers and now has over 3,000.

Since founded in 2010, OneProsper has enabled 460 girls to attend school and supported 230 families in the Thar Desert.

Through his international business and affairs courses, Raju learned about global issues and how international business can connect people and resources. Learning about global issues inspired Raju to use the tools he gained from his Commerce degree to make a difference.

“Follow your intuition. Come up with an idea and work hard to make that idea a reality. You need to be persistent and resilient. There will be challenges but you will overcome those challenges,” said Raju when asked what advice he would give to Sprott students.

“Try to look at what people are already doing and how your work will be unique. How can you stand out and make a difference?”