(September 15, 2021) In the past year, Syed Hussaini helped as many as one lakh Indians through his US-based Support for Educational and Economic Development (SEED). The help enabled some of India’s poorest access medical support, education for their kids and training to financially sustain themselves. Run as a charitable trust, the organization ropes in the Indian community settled in the West to contribute to better the lives of Indian students.  

In an interview with Better India, Hussaini said, “All this impact has been facilitated by the community, I am merely a medium. Our objective has been to help the poor go to school, enabling them to earn a livelihood.” 

Growing up in Hyderabad, Hussaini himself had faced poverty and all its travails. Despite graduating with an Engineering degree in 1972, he found it difficult to land a good job. It was around this time that the Nizam’s Charitable Trust offered him a scholarship to study in the US and Hussaini went on to do his MS in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, after which he joined the corporate sector and settled down in Dallas, Texas. When this Global Indian finally retired in 2007 at the age of 60, he decided to give back to the society that had enabled him to realize his dreams and that’s how SEED came about in 2009. The organization aims to support students in need to help them realize their full potential.  

Over the past year alone, SEED USA has assisted a total of 1.5 lakh poor in India with about 18,000 children being able to attend school and 80,000 availing their free medical services. SEED usually ropes in NRIs who’re willing to contribute to these causes and disperses the funds through various activities Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) permitted NGOs based in India like NAM Foundation in Hyderabad, The Calcutta Muslim Orphanage, Kolkata, and Zohra Women and Children Charitable Welfare Trust, Karnataka.