Hemang Desai's, shown at the right in the photo together with President Elect Bob Curran, experience on a social sabbatical in South Africa working with non-profits to improve their performance triggered his interest in helping non-profits all the time. SAP encourages its employees to use their experience helping businesses to do the same for non-profits through these social sabbaticals.
 
After returning from the sabbatical and talking about the experience with his wife, who is a Director in Price Waterhouse's healthcare consulting practice, they decided to launch a fundraising effort centered around the traditional Indian dance recitals that are part of the dance studio his wife operates on the side. These efforts were successful in raising money for good causes, generating about $70,000 in a few years. But they also learned providing money alone was not sufficient to improve performance and results. That takes more commitment over time. 
 
So they launched Ray of Hope in 2011 to focus on improving the performance of non-profits providing health care services and education in the US and India. The formal foundation structure allows them to focus on long term relationships, five to seven years, with a few non-profits where they provide funds and management talent to lift the performance of the non-profit permanently. 
 
The initial efforts focused on the Gwalier Children's Charity in their home region of India. The Gwalier Charity provides residential and non-residential education and services for children with handicaps such as MS. One of the first things they invested in for the school was a bus to bring children to the school from the surrounding villages. Quickly realizing the bus was idle throughout most of the day, they started an outreach health service using the bus as the delivery vehicle. These health camps reach over 120,000 people to educate them in sanitation and other preventive measures, provide vaccinations, as well as delivering acute care. Second an ambulance was acquired to better support the provision of acute care to the region. Cases that cannot be handled within the scope of the health camps now have transport to medical centers. 
 
Basic utility services are unreliable in the area so they invested in solar panels to power the Gwalier orphanage buildings reliably. Finally they tackled disease prevention by improving the water system for the school. They installed a new water tank to collect rain water and clean it for human consumption. 
 
At the same time, Ray of Hope has been working with the Inglis House, a skilled nursing facility serving the severely disabled in Philadelphia. Many of the residents were spending hours doing essentially nothing when volunteers were not available to read to them or assist in other ways. Ray of Hope invested in adaptive technology and work stations to allow the residents to use computers independently. They are now able to do things such as read e-books for themselves and type to communicate using eye movements. One of the residents just published a book, typing out the story using eye movements instead of his/her hands to manipulate the keyboard.
 
Ray of Hope is about to start a new investment cycle in India partnering with the Bal Utsav public school. In India public schools are of poor quality, so everyone who can sends their children to private schools. The goal of the Bal Utsav program is to raise the educational attainment level to that of private schools, making quality education available to everyone. Ray of Hope is focusing on teacher development by providing scholarships, in service training programs and teacher placement. Targeted to the students is the WASH program that teaches about water, sanitation and hygiene, with a particular focus on feminine hygiene. Girls meet with an ob/gyn practitioner twice and receive sanitary supplies. The WASH program eliminates one of the major reasons women are under-educated. 
 
The primary focus of their healthcare efforts will be Karma Healthcare. This organization provides local health clinics supported by telemedicine. Each clinic is expected to support the health care needs of about 35,000 people with education in preventive practices as well as direct care for specific conditions.