We think that it is really important for charities to be absolutely clear how donations will be used. We think giving money to a charity shows a great deal of trust and support, and we don't take it lightly, so we try and support that trust as best we can by making access to information about us as easy as possible.

Where donations do go

Every penny donated -  as in, every penny - goes to India. When it is there it is spent on a number of different things. Broadly speaking it goes into five areas - investment in infrastructure (classrooms etc), investment in people (such as training teachers), the day to day goings-ons (children's food, books etc), wider developmental investment related to the school (putting in a bore-hole for water, developing better farming techniques etc) and things that enable all this to happen (such as supporting RBKS, legal fees to secure the school land).

In a little more detail:

• It pays our teachers' and local staff's wages. That is, 8 teachers, two cooks, on odd-job man and one person who brings water and keeps the place tidy.
• It pays for books, pens, pencils, toys, paints and all sorts of materials for the children.
• We give the children lunch each day, so it pays for that (Cost: £90 per month, or 4.5p per child per day).
• It pays for staff capacity building, such as sending them on exposure trips to visit, learn from and share with other schools, or to go to inspirational places such as solar-cooking and zero-waste meetings.
• It pays for all the stationary in the school for the teachers, as well as the pots and pans in the kitchens.
• It pays for improvement to the school environment such as tree planting. Not only does this make the school look nicer, it also in time will help keep the place cooler and as we've planted lots of fruit trees, will keep the children busy in harvest time! It's the children who plant and learn about all the trees and their importance so it's good educationally, and I suppose you could say it carbon off-sets some of our energy use too.
• Ash bought a motorbike with his own money for the school, but donations pay for its fuel and maintenance. The bike is really important to us for getting more done at the school as public transport is intermittent and over-crowded. We use the bike to visit people and shops and to get to school each day, as school starts two hours before the first bus might arrive. We do of course make sure we use the bus instead when possible, and always walk short distances rather than ride.
• Sometimes at the school we have special events, such as on Independence Day, so on those days we buy extra materials so the children can make sweets to hand around and we might hire a microphone and speakers for the speeches.
• It enables us to have internet connection for our team in India so we can keep in touch with them more easily. It is also a great learning resource for the team. (Cost: £5 per month). We also say to Deepak that he should reclaim the cost of his mobile phone calls related to the charity (about £3 a month), but he prefers to not claim that expense. The laptop we use was given to us by my uncle.
• It enables us to have a little home for our coordinator, Ed and Ash to stay in when they are in India, and for other guests, such as volunteers to stay in (Cost:£10 a month). The bits and bobs of furnishing that home, such as mattresses to sleep on, cooking utensils and a lick of paint every now and then are also paid for by donations. Tedchnically speaking this food eaten there is also reclaimable, but no-one ever tends to ask for it.
• Firewood - we cook by firewood at the school, and get a tractor load delivered every few months to do so (Cost: £7 per month).

Where donations don't go

It's just as important to be clear where money doesn't go to as to where it does go, to minimise any possible ambiguity or confusion:

• No advertising. We don't advertise ourselves apart from on google, which is free for charities.
• No accounting cost. We don't pay any accountants in the UK, we do it ourselves and with the help of friendly accountants who certify them for us. We do pay an for an annual audit on the Indian accounts, which is required by law for NGOs.
• No web-site designers. Ed has built all the incarnations of the Educate for Life website (which is why you might find the odd error here or there!), and he pays for all the web hosting so we can keep money from donations concentrated in the right places.
• No branded coffee mugs. We borrow our mums'. 
• Ed and Ash, Educate for Life co-founders, don't get paid a wage or expenses. That means we pay for our own visas to India, our own flights and our own cost of getting there. We do tuck into food when at Hunar Ghar and stay in the Educate for Life home, but we also make our own donations to the charity from time to time, which more than covers these small amounts anyway.
• No white 4x4s, no air conditioned offices. We like to keep things simple, so don't go in for all these extravagances. Yes India is hot, but it is manageable. It's certainly no hotter for us than the people who toil in their fields each day. Although that in itself probably isn't a strong argument not to have such amenities, we do believe that we should minimise the economic disparity between us and the people we work with as much as possible if we really believe we are equal people. On top of that, it is money that is better spent else where and such things are big pollutants, which we don't agree with the unnecessary use of.
• No zebras. No exotic animals wandering around fancy extravagant charity galas for the rich as we try and get money out of them. We think it is best for our philosophy to be reflected in every aspect of the  charity and that our lives should be a living representation of those values. Life's not about the ends, its as much as about how we get to those ends and the way in which we conduct ourselves along the way.
• Equal treatment. When people come and stay with us they live with us, which is with the people in the village. No putting up people in expensive hotels, no celebrities talking with people about how desperate the water shortage is only to return to the power-shower and swimming pool in the evening.