Schoolgirls in India smiling with new backpacks
A new charity for children in India & Sri Lanka

A backpack shouldn't decide who gets to go to school.

One Backpack fills backpacks with the basics — notebooks, pencils, a water bottle — and places them in the hands of children who need them, through trusted local partners in India and Sri Lanka.

$25One donation = one child equipped, in either country
100 → 100,000From a 100-child pilot to a goal of 100,000 children a year by Year 5
2 countries, 1 promiseIndia + Sri Lanka • Every distribution documented
Photo: Schoolgirls with new backpacks, India — Nirmaan / Backpacks for Dreams

Simple on purpose

No warehouses, no shipping containers, no middlemen. Just a filled backpack, bought near the child's own school, handed over by people the community already trusts.

1

You fill a backpack

When donations open, $25 fills one backpack completely — the bag, the supplies inside it, local delivery, and the documentation that proves it arrived.

2

Local partners buy locally

Our partner organizations in India and Sri Lanka buy supplies in their own markets. Local buying costs 3–4× less than shipping from abroad — so a donation equips more children.

3

A child starts school ready

The backpack is handed directly to a child at their school or village. You see the photos, the receipts, and the count — every distribution, every time.

A backpack filled with notebooks, pencils and school supplies
Photo: parentingisnteasy.co

What's inside every backpack

Everything a child needs to walk into class ready on day one — nothing fancy, nothing missing.

  • A sturdy school bag
  • Notebooks and exercise books
  • Pencils, pens, eraser, sharpener and ruler
  • A geometry box for older children
  • A water bottle
  • In Sri Lanka, a shoe voucher too

One more thing — for the girls who need it most

Getting a girl to school is only half the job. Keeping her there is the other half. In both India and Sri Lanka, girls in upper grades miss school every month — or quietly stop going — simply because they lack sanitary essentials. So alongside the backpack, donors will be able to add one upgrade:

🌸

The Dignity Kit

Sanitary pads, soap, underwear and a discreet pouch — an optional upgrade to a girl's backpack, with contents chosen together with our local partner.

💛

Given with care

Kits are handed over by women teachers and partner staff, privately and without ceremony. A girl's dignity is not a photo opportunity.

🧾

Proven, not pictured

Dignity Kits are documented the careful way — itemized receipts and counts, never photographs of the girls who receive them. The tier launches with our pilot; its price is set with our partner and published before donations open.

Honest numbers, published openly

Trust starts with showing the math. These are real local prices from established school-kit programs in each country — the same programs we aim to partner with.

KitWhat's coveredLocal cost
India — core kitBag, notebooks, stationery, geometry box for higher grades₹600–1,000 · about $7–11
India — full kitCore kit plus water bottle, lunch box and footwearabout $22
Sri Lanka — full packBag, 8 exercise books, pens and a shoe voucher$18–20
One Backpack donor priceOne complete backpack for one child, in either country — including partner administration and documented delivery$25

We publish itemized receipts for every distribution we fund. If we ever spend less than $25 on a child, the difference equips the next one — and we'll show that too.

Where the backpacks go

India — where a proven school kit costs less than a pizza. We grant only to FCRA-registered Indian organizations: the government registration every charity there must hold to receive foreign funding. Grants go directly to the organization doing the work — never through chains of intermediaries.

Sri Lanka — where established charities already deliver complete school packs village by village. Our partners are registered with Sri Lanka's National Secretariat for NGOs, the body that oversees charities receiving foreign support.

Before any partner receives a single dollar, we verify their registration on the official register — and re-verify it every year.

Schoolchildren in uniform in Sri Lanka
Schoolchildren in Sri Lanka. Photo: Ministry of Defence, Sri Lanka (defence.lk)

Our promise to you

We're a brand-new charity, and we know trust is earned, not claimed. So here is exactly how we'll earn it:

🛡️

Registered partners only

Every partner's government registration is verified before funding — FCRA in India, the NGO Secretariat in Sri Lanka.

🤝

Direct grants, no chains

Money goes straight to the organization that buys the supplies and hands over the backpacks.

📸

Proof, published

Photos, receipts and child counts from every funded distribution go up on this site for anyone to see.

🌱

Lean and open

We keep our own costs minimal and publish our numbers — what came in, what went out, what each backpack cost.

100

Our first project: 100 backpacks

Before we ask the world for anything, we prove it works. Our pilot funds 100 backpacks with one verified partner — bought locally, delivered to real children, documented end to end. Then we publish everything: every receipt, every photo, every lesson learned.

That's the standard every project after it has to meet.

Family-funded from day one 🌞

One Backpack's first supporter is family. SunBuddy — the friendly dinosaur that makes sunscreen fun for kids, from our founder's other venture — will give $1 from every SunBuddy sold to One Backpack, starting on its launch day. Every 25 SunBuddys means one more child walking into school with everything they need. Protect a kid here. Equip a kid there. Transfers and totals will be published, like everything else we do.

Questions, answered straight

Is my donation tax-deductible?

It will be once our 501(c)(3) status is approved — which is why donations open after that approval, not before. We'd rather wait and do it properly.

Why buy supplies locally instead of shipping them?

Three reasons: it costs 3–4× less, so donations equip more children; it supports the local shops near the schools; and it gets the right supplies — the notebooks and formats those schools actually use.

How do I know a backpack really reached a child?

Every funded distribution is documented with dated photos, itemized receipts and a child count, published on this site. If we can't document it, we don't fund it.

Who runs One Backpack?

One Backpack is being founded in Florida by people who believe a small, concrete act — one filled backpack — can change the start of a child's school year. This site grows with us: partner names, pilot results and financial reports will all live here.