Hope108 — Where every number carries a name.
A registered NGO born in Saidapet with one mission: no one in Chennai should go to bed hungry. Fourteen years later, we feed, educate, counsel, and restore.
Our Beginning
Grief turned into grace.
A mission born in May 2011.
Every organisation has an origin story. Ours begins not with a plan, but with a loss — and the decision, made quietly in the aftermath of grief, that sorrow could become service.
In May 2011, Anaya Jothi Charitable Trust was registered in Saidapet, Chennai. The immediate impulse was simple and ancient: feed people. The first drives were local — hot meals distributed on the streets of Saidapet to families who had nothing for dinner, to daily-wage workers who had nothing left at the end of a long day, to the elderly who had no one cooking for them. The act of feeding someone is one of the most elemental forms of human recognition. It says: I see you. You matter. You will eat tonight.
"In May 2011, our journey began with one mission: no one should go to bed hungry."
By 2012, we understood something important: hunger and education are not two problems. They are one. A child who eats will still be left behind if she cannot afford the books, the uniform, the fees that keep her seat in a classroom. We began our Education Support programme — covering tuition, supplies, and after-school mentoring for children from families with no financial margin for error.
By 2014, we saw a third dimension: knowledge without skills leaves young adults stranded between aspiration and income. Our Skill Development and Vocational Training programme launched — beauty courses, tailoring, computer literacy, electrical wiring — designed to put real earnings in real hands within months.
By 2017, we could no longer ignore what we had been seeing all along: the weight that poverty places on the mind. Depression, anxiety, compounding grief — these are not conditions that only affect people with time and money to notice them. In some ways, they are conditions that poverty manufactures. Our free Mental Health and Counselling services began that year — a quiet room and a trained counsellor, available to anyone who needed them.
By 2020, we were planting trees. Our Environmental Protection programme — including the 1mp.space partnership to restore one million native Palmyra palms across Tamil Nadu — grew from the same insight that had guided every programme before it: the people with the fewest resources suffer the consequences of environmental damage first and most severely.
By 2025, fifteen years of unbroken service. The name has evolved. The registration says Anaya Jothi Charitable Trust. The mission says Hope108. The work says: we are still here. We are still showing up. And we are not done.
What Hope108 Does
Five programmes.
One unbroken commitment.
Hunger Relief
Nutritious meals for homeless families, orphans, and daily-wage workers. Monthly ration kits for underprivileged households who would otherwise go without. Food delivered not as charity, but as the right it always was.
Learn more →Education Support
School fee assistance, books, and uniforms for children from economically disadvantaged families. Scholarships and after-school mentoring for bright students who need only the chance — not the money — to succeed.
Learn more →Mental Health & Counselling
Free, confidential counselling for individuals battling depression and anxiety. Emotional well-being workshops for women, youth, and students — held as human conversations in safe rooms, not clinical procedures in cold offices.
Learn more →Skill Development
Beauty courses, tailoring, computer literacy, and vocational training that put real income in real hands within months. Career counselling and job placement assistance. Because potential without access is invisible.
Learn more →Environmental Protection
Tree-planting campaigns, community clean-up drives, and recycling workshops. Through our 1mp.space partnership, we are restoring one million native Palmyra palms across Tamil Nadu — because protecting the earth is protecting its people.
Learn more →Impact by the numbers
Fourteen years in.
The count keeps climbing.
Our Values
The beliefs that shape
every decision we make.
Dignity First
"We serve without conditions. Nobody is asked to prove their need, produce documentation, or justify their circumstances. If you arrive, you are welcome. That is the only rule."
Radical Transparency
"Every rupee is tracked. Every programme is reported. Every outcome is shared — with our donors, our beneficiaries, and the public. Trust is not claimed; it is demonstrated, one honest account at a time."
Long-term Thinking
"We don't measure success in meal counts alone. We measure it in changed trajectories — a child who returns to school, a woman who earns her first independent income, a young man who wakes up feeling like the future is still open."
Community Ownership
"We work with communities, not for them. Every programme is shaped by those who use it. The people closest to a problem are also the closest to its solution — we listen before we act."
The hope108.in Connection
Why 108?
Hope108.in is the digital home of this same organisation — the same trust, the same mission, the same people. The two names describe the same unbroken thread of service that began in Saidapet in May 2011.
But why 108? In Indian tradition, 108 is not an arbitrary number. It appears in the distances between celestial bodies. It is the number of beads in a mala used in prayer and meditation. There are 108 Upanishads. In yoga, 108 sun salutations mark a seasonal transition. In temple architecture, 108 recurs in sacred geometry. The number is understood, across Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions, as the number of completeness — the full cycle of a journey, the wholeness of a thing done right.
This is why Hope108 chose it. Not 100 acts — a round number that stops short. Not 200 — an overreach that loses its shape. But 108: the number that says a cycle of service has been honoured in full. The aspiration is not a programme count. It is a way of living: complete, attentive, and present to the person in front of you.
Join the mission
Hope108 is looking for people like you.
You don't need money or qualifications. You need willingness. Come with what you have — an hour on a Saturday, a skill you'd share, a heart that's ready — and we will find a place for you.