- Phase VIII, Focal Point, Chandigarh Road, Ludhiana - 141010
- Email order@payitforwardsocietyindia.com
- Call 0161-5210100
The Pay It Forward Society, founded by Kyra and Sarah Pahwa in 2017, is a registered non-profit organisation. The society sponsors the college education of high school students belonging to low-income communities, in order to facilitate inclusive, collective, and equitable progress.
At Pay It Forward, we raise funds through the sale of handcrafted products such as diaries and decorative stationery. Through exhibitions, we have strived to expand the scope and impact of our initiative, as well as foster increased awareness for equal access to education and opportunities for growth and development.
We aim to be creative, collaborative, and most importantly, compassionate.
The concept of pay it forward is ancient. It is found in literature ranging from Ancient Greek comedies to Benjamin Franklin’s letters, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Compensation” and Lily Hardy Hammond’s novel In The Garden of Delight. Celebrated sci-fi author, Robert Heinlein, started a humanitarian organisation, known for abiding by this philosophy and teaching it to others. The phrase and concept inspired an award-winning 1999 novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde, who established the Pay It Forward foundation, committed to spreading various acts of kindness around the globe. Her novel was adapted into a major motion film in 2000, further helping to make pay it forward a household phrase and inspiring Pay It Forward Day, April 28th, organised since 2007.
We launched Pay It Forward’ in 2017 as an initiative to ensure the exponential growth of goodness and kindness in humanity. The students that we help, take a pledge that they will continue this when they are able.
At the heart of Pay It Forward Society lies a commitment to empowerment and community upliftment.
Our belief that education sets you free, made our initiative focus on sponsoring the higher education of deserving students. Students are chosen every year, and are those who on their own merit have secured undergraduate admission to a reputed college/university, but would be unable to attend due to a lack of funds. Through Pay it Forward, we provide them the financial assistance to study in the college of their dreams.
We wish that every student that we have supported will, one day, do the same for someone else. Thus, we can form a new world wide web of kindness.
Thank all of you for your support towards this goal, and our promise to you is that we will continue to spread it forward.
Sarah Pahwa is currently a Senior pursuing Entrepreneurship in Babson College, USA and is attending one year in LSE, London for the academic year 2024-25. She is passionate about inducing collective change at the community level through targeted interventions, careful study of human behaviour, and efforts to increase social awareness. She hopes to incorporate the elements of Positive Psychology in her solutions to socioeconomic and cultural conflicts of contemporary society.
Kyra Pahwa is a 17 year old student at the Sat Paul Mittal School in Ludhiana, where she currently studies in Grade 12 in the Non Medical Stream. Kyra founded the Pay It Forward Society with her sister Sarah in 2017, and has been involved in the planning and execution of the Society's events since its conception. Being a person high on EQ, she has always aimed to work with empathy and compassion, putting her heart and soul into her initiatives. She aspires to bring about tangible social change through inclusive and impact-oriented community action.
