We are building children’s libraries and play school for children under the age of 12, in remote ethnic communities. We wish to provide enthusiastic children with the tools and the assets to learn, educate and all the while having fun. We wish to help foster a bond between children & books!

If you wish to join our team of volunteers & be part of our small effort to bring books, learning tools, teaching & fun to our ethnic children, there are several things you can do:

• Send us books that we can share through our libraries – learn how to send your books here
• Share our post on your social media profiles so others can find ways to volunteer with us
• Mentor & Teach students remotely – find out what we are doing here
• Subscribe to our YouTube Channel & view our messaging in our YouTube videos
• If you wish to make a financial contribution please contact us here

Over 25 million, accounting for about 30% of Chhattisgarh’s population comes from the Indian tribal communities (the majority of Indian ethnic communities residing in the beautiful north-eastern states as reported in the 2011 census).

The region is rich in natural resources and likely going to see a lot of economic growth in the coming years. Education thus remains a key aspect of the region’s growth, enabling the native people to be eligible to benefit from such industrialization.

Pahadi Korwas, Gonds, Khairwars, Kanwars and Pandos are the major tribal groups residing in the district. The local administration is acutely aware of the possibilities and the Indian government has the right intentions for the upliftment of the ethnic communities through education. We have already enrolled several families into our library & a lot more are waiting to be signed up.

But just like any noble effort, the implementation depends on the integrity and ethics of the individuals responsible to spend the funds and efforts appropriately. This was the biggest challenge to our initiatives. But again, no good deeds can fail so desperately.

We had unprecedented support from several unusual corners. Various government departments, people from literary communities & our sponsors came forward to lend their time, money & effort to this cause. So what started off as a small trial to build a free library & a free play school for a few tribal children & their families, slowly grew into something big now. We are currently waiting for a few paperwork to be completed before we can start our work.

We followed from the inspiration of several others who took upon themselves to spread education & learning in various remote regions of the world. Compared to such leaders, our initiative is small and contained within only a few locations in India right now.

The post Furthering Learning & Literacy in Ethnic Indian Communities with Free Children’s Play School & Library first appeared on Explore India TV.

Veena & her husband Virendra Gupta did not look anywhere for help. They are teachers at heart. So when the pandemic struck children from the poorer sections of Delhi, they did not waste time but took to the streets themselves. They set up roadside classrooms & started teaching. It all started when “Veena Gupta’s maid, who lives on bank of the river, complained that with schools shut, children in her impoverished community were running amok and wasting time” according to the September 2020 report by WaPo.

Filmmaker Remi Bumstead & producer Alexandra Zeitlin drove through 10 countries from London to The Gambia in West Africa in their call to bring education closer to the special needs children of Kashmir & Africa. With donations from friends and families, they fixed up a bus, fondly named Janga Bus, loaded it with toys & teaching materials, and drove across borders to fulfil their mission.

Kundan Kanskar took matters of education into his own hands. Vivek Manjunath, Shahid Nizam, Sahil Kaushar, Jay Kumar Singh, Kundan Kanskar, Shubham Singh, Amritansh Kumar and Santosh Kumar established “Save Child Beggar” with the sole focus on child beggars, giving them an opportunity to read, write & eat.

They inspired thousands of volunteer teachers & restaurant owners to come forward with their helping hands. “After coming from Karnataka, I felt sad when I saw so many homeless kids in Delhi. I felt we should do something to these kids literate” he said in an interview with Times of India.

Like everywhere else, ethnic communities have struggled for ages to keep their land, their identity & follow the footsteps of their ancestors in peace. But peace is something that our so called modern, more advanced societies refused to give them. In the US, the native Americans continue to struggle for civil rights, for a simple acknowledgement of humanity from the ones who invaded & took their lands by force.

In India, while the government has in bits & pieces shown all the good intentions of protecting indigenous tribes, the situation at the grass roots are completely different. They are still subjected to inhuman labor, torture and decimation. Lately, more such news are cropping up, thanks to extending mobile networks & people’s use of social media.

While there’s no shortage of inspirations around us, there is also a million things to do. We are moving forward with our literacy programs in small steps, assisted by close friends and families. We would love for you to join us in our book drive & take a significant step towards facilitating education in rural communities.

The post Inspirational work furthering literacy first appeared on Explore India TV.

Listen & Subscribe to our podcasts now:

• Chai Pe Charcha (in Hindi)
• Purposeful Happiness (in English)

About Chai Pe Charcha Podcast

The weekly podcast, anchored by Astha, is about tribal lifestyles, travel to hidden destinations & a lot of talk from the creators, travelers & social workers at Explore India TV & Jay Shakuntala Welfare Foundation of Chhattisgarh.

About Purposeful Happiness Podcast

This series, anchored by Ranjay, is about practical ways to be happy, calm & peaceful in life. Apart from philosophy of happiness & bliss, we all need a personalized approach to our happiness. it is about the journey from being always anxious & terrified to being always blissful!

With this podcast we are competing with 1 billion crazy people almost desperate to cause troubles, 2 billion spouses, 3 billion authors from toddlers to suited-booted marketers who write prolific best sellers on happiness & yet are extremely unhappy by themselves & numerous other sources of unhappiness – from boss to your burger 🙂

Happy Listening!

The post Our Podcasts complete 6 months first appeared on Explore India TV.

As such, we depend mostly on what we hear & what we see on the ground. While the Government along with various trusted non-profit organizations have been able to curb the spread of the pandemic in many of these fragile communities, the future looks extremely bleak by any means.

Vaccination hesitancy, non-availability of basic supplies, unusual lifestyles & in many cases the remoteness of their communities have been the major challenges faced by the volunteers to get them the proper protection.

Although the tribal communities constitute less than 10% of the population, its critical for this generation to acknowledge their merits & the values of their cultures & heritages before we lose them completely. According to the Anthropological Survey of India, India is home to 461 communities, of which 174 are identified as sub-groups, in 212 tribes.

If its not the pandemic, it will be hunger!

It almost seems that the situation is going to get worse with the spread of Omicron. Numerous tribal families are abandoning their heritage & community, driven by hunger, while the fear of Covid is barely well understood by them. For the past 2 years they have been braving the pandemic with the optimism that the virus would be contained in some way, however, they are slowly becoming aware of the perilous days ahead – without food, without livelihood & without much hope.

The tribal children will be the most adversely affected. While we are foreseeing their parents having to travel long distances & possibly out of state, soliciting work, their earnings will never be enough to take care of their children’s health, education or nutrition.

Jay Shakuntala Welfare Foundation is doing its small part to assist, but with government funding almost reduced to none, with almost all avenues of sourcing either donations or manpower withering away fast, we might be reduced to running small free-kitchens in only a small handful of communities.

In our plans to start small community libraries for ethnic children, we are pondering the options of providing some sort of a nutritious meal to the kids & possibly to their families. There are a few local residents who are coming forward to volunteer with us, however, this plan has several roadblocks ahead, the biggest one being the community lock downs, where some of these delicate communities are often cut off from external contacts for weeks & months together, with very strict rules of contacting the tribals living there.

The light at the end of the tunnel

The Covid-19 Tribal Resource Center has extensive plans to assist the tribal communities in many ways. Some of them are likely to provide momentary relief. And like always, there is always light at the end of the tunnel.

Hundreds of successful professionals have jumped into social work at this hour of need from cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, Nasik, Pune, Delhi, Chennai etc. Many are focused on education & literacy, looking at the months & years ahead, while many are hands & feet into solving the current pandemic situations.

There are tremendous exciting news of providing funds & working hand in hand with social workers at the grass roots to deliver vaccines and medical help to remote tribal communities come in almost every day.

Like in any generation, while many of us are still nonchalant of these miseries & hardships, many more have shown the good intent of helping in whatever way they can. We are proud to be associated with some such professionals.

You can help!

This might be a good time to join the fight against the pandemic and further education & literacy. You can help in numerous ways. If you would wish to join our team of volunteers or donors for one of our programs, send us an email [ at exploreindia.tv.team (at) gmail.com ] & we will get in touch with details.

The post The impending post pandemic threats to tribal communities first appeared on Explore India TV.

The students of Jay Shakuntala Welfare Foundation celebrated the occasion in Balrampur, Chhattisgarh with the traditional hoisting of the national flag & the rhythm of the national anthem at the primary school grounds.

In spite of the rising Covid situations, the small community gathered in school grounds early morning with JSWF members.

While in a non-pandemic situation the celebrations would have included numerous cultural festivities, for now the community had to be satisfied with just a simple reminder of democracy & the freedom that every Indian enjoys.

The Republic Day celebration was attended by the officials of the Block Development Office & the Vice President & Directors of Jay Shakuntala Welfare Foundation. Mr Sanjeev Gupta, VP JSW Foundation served as the chief guest in the celebration.

JSWF is setting up small community libraries & a play school for these ethnic children in an honest effort to forward literacy. The pandemic would leave a lasting impression on the economy as well as the moral & mental healths of these ethnic people. The children would be the most badly affected in the post pandemic period according to studies released by the anthropological department of Delhi University.

Unless mindful and conscientious people step forward, it would be too late to assist an already struggling heritage of the country. If you would wish to help with any of the JSWF Educational Programs, please contact us with your thoughts.

The post JSWF Children Celebrates Indian Republic Day first appeared on Explore India TV.

Join Us in this Children’s Book Collection drive

Parents, teachers and the community can band together to collect new and gently used books for schools, out-of-school programs, child care centers and little libraries at home. You can motivate & encourage friends, neighbors, other parents, club members and co-workers to donate new or barely used children’s books.

Everyone who organizes and contributes to book drives helps us reach more children with the gift of books and the promise of literacy. Read more of our #Read2Grow Program here.

New to Book Drive?

We can help you get started!

Be Inspired & Inspire Others

The post Children’s Book Drive first appeared on Explore India TV.

What a tremendous 2021! With global tensions, wars, political cruelty and of course the pandemic that is still running a strong course even after 2 years & killing millions in its way. And yet, there are more to look forward to in 2022.

We at Explore India TV are excited about 2022. Several programs that we wanted to start late in 2022 have already been kicked off. While a lot of the ground work are yet to complete, our progress has been significant with our Building Community Library program & the Mentorship Program for Ethnic Students.

We have always wanted to rediscover the hidden gems of Indian heritage. And we found some of that in the tribal artists of Chhattisgarh, who for generations have been creating traditional Bastar Silk Sarees with ethnic art & designs. Faced by tremendous competition from commercial establishments, and run down by an archaic system of social commerce, they are on the verge of extinction.

We will continue to bring heritage issues and ethnic knowledge to our podcasts this year along with posting these trivia on our YouTube Channel as well. We anticipate growing our podcast audiences. They are available on all popular platforms including Spotify, Amazon, Audible, iTunes, Google & others.

If you are passionate about ethnic cultures, Indian heritage & minimalistic lifestyles, you could join us in our efforts to rediscover our Indian heritage. There are other ways to help, support & encourage us as well. Meanwhile, thank you for walking this journey with us this year!

Help Us Get the Good Word Out

1. Subscribe to our YouTube Channel & Comment & Share our research based videos
2. Like our FaceBook Page & Comment & Share our research based articles
3. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram & Pinterest – our social media handle is @ExploreIndiaTV

Share Your Experience & Thoughts

We need all the help we can get! Share your corporate experience, your experience as a teacher or your professional experience as an educator or coach & mentor our field teams. You can do this via tele-presence using Zoom, Skype or Google Talk.

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The post Happy New Year 2022 first appeared on Explore India TV.

Happy Hanukkah

& Happy Holidays!

It’s that time of the year, when Santa takes his ride from the North Pole dropping toys to the kids in his Nice List, while for the kids on the Naughty List, well its another year of trying to be nice!

We hope that your holidays will be happy & peaceful, celebrations thoughtful & you get to spend time with your loved ones. Let us keep in mind our communities, many of whom could be struggling through these hard times, and keep them in our prayers.

Let our prayers be with the children & kids who may have lost their loved ones in the middle of the pandemic. Let us hope they find loving homes & a warm meal. And last but not the least, let us be mindful of all our good fortunes, even if we had to struggle at times, and remind ourselves that our goodness could be the results of many others in our communities who have helped us in some way or the other.

The post Merry Christmas & Happy Hanukkah first appeared on Explore India TV.

We were curious to know how the ethnic communities of Chhattisgarh are preventing the spread of Covid so effectively, while the whole world was reeling from its deathly pangs!

Covid raged through India in the initial days, sweeping devastation across the length & breadth of the country. The states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh as well as most of the major metropolitan cities were badly hit. Unawareness, misconceptions about the virility & in many cases sheer ignorance of people caused death & devastation.

However, in the rural tribal communities, the virus was somewhat controlled. The government working with the local panchayats, ethnic community leaders & many social organizations, took to several unique ways to communicate the deadliness of the virus & educate the tribal people on the need to get vaccinated.

Jay Shakuntala Welfare Foundation, a non-profit organization led by an ethnic team from Balarampur, Chhattisgarh, went from one tribal village to another, accompanied by community members, nurse & mid-wives who were familiar with those communities, spreading the news of the vaccine, providing with masks & personal protection medicines and providing on-site assistance to those who wish to get vaccinated.

This video was taken in the community of the Khairwar Oraon ethnicity & the singers are singing the merits of a good & healthy life & how the vaccine could keep the villagers alive & healthy. The language is an archaic version of Sandri, a local language spoken in some very rural areas of Chhattisgarh.

The communities came together, not only having close to 100% vaccination rate but also implementing proper social distancing rules, personal hygiene etc. Looking back, the intent to save lives, these innovative approaches & the desire to persist with these programs till every community member is safe, led to saving all these heritage tribes.

The post Covid Vaccinations in Tribal Communities first appeared on Explore India TV.