Old debunked message about financial help to poor students by NGO Prerana and supported by Infosys foundation revived again - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
August 25, 2021
A post is being widely shared on social media claiming that an NGO named Prerana is supported by Infosys foundation and wants poor students to contact them. The post even claims that students from poor financial backgrounds who scored more than 80% in their 10 standard this year will be asked to give a test to make them eligible for financial help. Let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Financial help to poor students is being offered by NGO Prerana (supported by Infosys Foundation).
Fact: Infosys Foundation denies any association with the NGO Prerana mentioned in the post. According to the website of NGO Prerana, they do provide financial-aid to meritorious students from underprivileged backgrounds, but the post is not part of any of their schemes this year. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
There are three phone numbers provided in the post. Factly dialed all the numbers but none of them were operational.
There is a link provided in the post, on clicking the link, the official website of Infosys Foundation pops up. There is no mention of NGO Prerana conducting a test for students from the poor financial backgrounds who scored more than 80% in their 10th standard this year. There is a “Fraud Alert” message regarding fake messages (in relation to NGOs) on the website’s home page, which states that, ‘Infosys Foundation does not use social media to get beneficiaries’
We searched online using relevant keywords and found that the same message was found in a Times of India article, but this story was from 16 May 2011; more than 10 years old. This post was in circulation since 2011 across social media.
Boom had written a fact-check article about the same viral post, on 30 May 2017. They contacted an Infosys spokesperson who replied, “The message is completely wrong, and Infosys is in no way associated with the Prerana foundation.” Boom also contacted NGO Prerana’s CEO/Secretary Ram Sastry who said, “We are not exactly linked to Infosys Foundation, but they are one of our donors and donate once in a while. The message is for the foundation itself and came in around 7 years ago (2010-11) when the phone numbers in the message were authentic. All the three people used to work with us earlier. But the numbers are not applicable anymore.”
According to the website of NGO Prerana, they do provide Financial-Aid to meritorious students from underprivileged backgrounds, but the post is not part of any of their schemes this year.
To sum it up, this post about financial help by NGO Prerana to poor students this year is not true.