In a landmark initiative to give back to their alma mater, the Loyola High School ICSE Batch of 1977 has established an endowment fund to support meritorious students. The initiative, which was set up under the Mast 77 Legacy Trust, will provide scholarships to academically excellent students graduating from Std XI to XII.
The Mast 77 Legacy Trust, created in 2018, has been actively involved in community welfare projects, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic, where they provided medicinal and other interventions to help two villages fight the virus. However, the Trust now aims to make a bigger, more sustainable impact in the field of education.
“We felt it was time to think of something more enduring involving our Alma Mater. With the support of all the students from the Batch of 1977, we decided to set up the ‘Batch of 1977 Endowment’ to fund scholarships for the toppers in the five academic streams at Loyola High School,” said a Trustee of the Trust. “This endowment will be a collective tribute to our school, our teachers, and the city of Jamshedpur, where we spent our formative years.”
The endowment is already operational, with the Trust thanking all the donors who made this possible in less than two months. The endowment corpus will be parked with Loyola High School in the form of a fixed deposit. The annual interest earned will be used to fund five scholarships of Rs. 10,000 each for the academic toppers in the five streams. The school will use only Rs. 50,000 of the interest every year, while any additional interest will be added back to the endowment corpus, ensuring its sustainability for future years. The Trust will step in if required to top up the fund.
The school will notify the Trust of the scholarship winners each year, and representatives of the Batch of 1977 will be invited to the school’s annual prize night for the scholarship distribution. Importantly, the school is not permitted to use the endowment for any other purposes, and the criteria for selecting the scholarship recipients will strictly be based on academic excellence.
On January 6, 2025, Trustees Sudhansu Pathak, Mahendra Gupta, Amresh Sinha, Gautam Mascharak, Vivek Lamba, and Framroze Bugli met with the Principal of Loyola High School, Fr. Vinod, and handed over a cheque of Rs. 700,000 to kick-start the endowment fund. Fr. Vinod expressed his gratitude, saying, “The scholarships will provide crucial support to the students and motivate them to strive for even greater academic success. I appreciate this initiative and thank you for your generosity, which will also serve as an inspiration for future generations of students.”
The first batch of scholarship recipients will be announced during the 2025 Annual Prize Night, scheduled to take place in March-April. This event is expected to be an especially proud and joyful occasion for the Batch of 1977, as they celebrate the success of the meritorious students and their lasting connection to Loyola High School.
