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.

Our teams, our sponsors & the local residents of Balrampur are excited to see this model play school & kids’ library coming to fruition. We received an overwhelming response from the local legislators & the government authorities on our intent & persuasion to take the step to open up this educational facility in this tribal community. We are currently waiting for the final paperwork to come through before we open up this facility to the local children.

The district of Balrampur – Ramanujganj is located in the northern part of Chhattisgarh, bordering the states of Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand & Madhya Pradesh and is spread out over a total land area of about 60.16 lakh hectares. 

Chhattisgarh, and Balrampur in particular, makes a great choice for building educational facilities focused on furthering literacy within the ethnic Indian communities. It is a tribal dominated district with, as of 2022 reported by the district administration, almost 63% of the population comprising of Scheduled Tribes while Scheduled Castes comprise of just 4.5% of the total population. Pahadi Korwas, Gonds, Khairwars, Kanwars and Pandos are the major tribal groups residing in the district.

Education & literacy is still a taboo in this state, dominated predominantly by the culture and traditions influenced by tribal beliefs and practices, with age old Indian traditions like the Ghotul (aka Gurukul) 

Our library & play school is built with a floor area of about 430 sq. ft, with well decorated traditional tribal designs & is going to be the home for close to 50 tribal children upto the age of 12. 15 kids are pre-enrolled and over a dozen more families are waiting to register in our play school. 

JSW Foundation is a registered educational institution & working in the Balrampur area with tribal families since February 2018. The children’s library & play school initiative is one of the key programs undertaken by the team with the sole intent of bringing educational facilities to the tribal families & creating a small community based environment of education & learning based on the traditional Indian heritages.

We will continue with our book drive. If you are one of those who believe in the power of good education and would like to join our extended family of book donors, please read the details here.

The post Free Play School & Library for Indian Tribal Children first appeared on Explore India TV.

Rabindra Jayanti Celebrations

This marks the celebration of the birth anniversary of Indian poet laureate Rabindranath Tagore. It is celebrated in early May, on the 25th day of the Bengali month of Baisakh. Tagore set up an entire schooling system in contrary to the then prevalent British system of materialistic education. What we now know from some of the letters & writings from British envoys working in India for the Queen, the British realized the only way to “break the backbone” of the country to help them colonize & rule, is to attack their education & religion.

Rabindranath Tagore boldly set up a school in Shantiniketan, land of the red soil, in West Bengal near Kolkata, & taught in the same fashion that Indian acharyas have taught for ages in the Gurukul system. Many Indian tribes, to this day, continue with this brilliant style of education in some shape or form.

Read:

• Ghotul customs
• Current situation of a modern tribal gurukul
• Gurukul in the Muria tribe

Eid

Islam is a dominant religion in India & the entire culture in many shapes & forms have been greatly influenced by Muslim ways of life, from architecture, sciences, literatures & arts. Eid is celebrated all over the country & reminds us of the blessings we count from this immense religious diversity of the country.

Delhi, which used to be the capital city of the Mughal rulers, has one of the most authentic representations of their art, architecture & food. During Eid, the mosques in the city come to life in the prayers of thousands of followers of Islam.

Shankaracharya Jayanti

Adi Shankaracharya is the first, and probably the only Vedic scholar from the 8th century CE to have realized the essence of non-duality & taught the philosophy & the practices of  Advaita Vedanta extensively all through the country. In addition his he expounded several Upanishads for the modern reader – the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Chandogya Upanishad, Aitareya Upanishad, Taittiriya Upanishad, Kena Upanishad, Isha Upanishad, Katha Upanishad, Mundaka Upanishad, Prashna Upanishad & the Mandukya Upanishad.

Although Shankaracharya’s exact birth anniversary is unknown, it is generally celebrated in the middle of the May.

So there you go! An entire month for us to celebrate our history of growth, cultures & heritages & celebrate our diversity through religion & literature.

We wish you celebrations, keeping yourself & your community & families safe & tolerant.

Sincerely Yours!

Explore India TV Team

The post Editorial May 2022 first appeared on Explore India TV.

Like any other month, April too is marked with numerous Indian festivals, a feature that makes India almost incredible. While the political & social scenarios have changed drastically over the last several decades, almost alarmingly, the religion centricity of the Indians have not changed a bit.

The New Year also coincides with the fresh harvest of the season. Vaisakhi, Baishaki, Bihu, Vishu, no matter what name you use & in which Indian state you are in, a good harvest is celebrated with good food & lot of dances. In the past people would travel to their hometowns & native villages to celebrate with their communities. The pandemic may have caused some heartburn but I doubt if there would be any less celebrations this year!

Along with the harvest & New Year, we also celebrate Ram Navami & Buddha Purnima in April. This just re-emphasizes the immense diversity of the culture & the richness in her people & religion, though at times have been used by foreign nations to create divisions, have in fact brought the communities together.

In case you have not had a chance to look into our Community Library program, where we are setting up our first small library in Balrampur in Chhattisgarh. You could join the #Read2Grow program to further literacy by joining our book drive & donating Children’s books. We are on schedule to open up the facility to our local children later in summer this year.

We hope you are enjoying spring time & celebrate not only the New Year but also get to go out safely to get the warmth of the coming summer months.

Wishing you all peace, celebrations & happiness!

Sincerely Yours!

Explore India TV Team

The post Editorial April 2022 first appeared on Explore India TV.

When I started to count, I found that by & large there are about 52 marked events depending on which specific Indian culture you look at. And we have not even counted the numerous more tribal festivals celebrated in diverse communities.

We doubt if the pandemic would put any damp on the festivities but that could also become a big spreader event. Hopefully, we all celebrate with caution, be festive without being too indulging & do our best to keep the virus away.

We have stepped up our book drive, requesting donations for children’s books for the Balrampur library. We have also secured a lot of reference books that we believe would be loved & appreciated by the youthful students. We would love for you to join our #Read2Grow program & contribute to our book drive.

• Articles on the Children’s Book Drive
• Tribal Community Libraries
• Much to do in Tribal Education
• The January Editorial

Meanwhile we continue the brick & mortar work for the library. In addition, upon requests from numerous local parents, we will be annexing the library with a small play school. We are working out the details & would be ready by the mid-year when we inaugurate our library premises.

Till we chat again, we wish you happiness & peace.

Sincerely Yours,

Explore India TV Team

The post Editorial March 2022 first appeared on Explore India TV.

Science is the new religion of our progress. We have seen how rapid scientific development of drugs saved millions of lives during the Covid pandemic. Although science is battling a grim battle from a rather unusual corner – from the capitalist communities, who have stalled a lot of the scientific progress in Americas & Europe.

Communities have also battled misinformation & dis-information in an age where information is abundantly available. We wonder if countries like India are ready for an information overload. There are numerous law suites with proven data that the major social platforms like Facebook & Instagram are thriving on hatred and their profit margins have sky rocketed just by promoting violence & hatred. One of the biggest law suites on Instagram is to curtail it’s fatally negative influence on children.

While India does not seem to have either laws or governance to curb such fatalities, we worry that we may not even be able to conceive the tremendous weakening of our young generations’, if not on morality, then certainly on their integrity & personal developments.

Science is also firm on her convictions that adverse climate changes will start affecting us in 5 years. The recent study of Antarctic glaciers marked the Thwaites Glacier (also called the Doomsday Glacier) as one of the major ice folds that could raise the sea levels up by 2 feet or more in 5 years, endangering life in many countries.

We have already seen the havoc climate played in the past year – volcanic eruptions, unusually strong & more frequent hurricanes & tornadoes, tsunamis, rain & snow in places that had not seen such climate in over 100 years!

We need to educate our children!

Children are the most critical resource of any nation. At this hour, when deadly capitalism is raging wars in other nations, hatred is destroying even the poorest of the countries, and Nature is being stripped off her dignity, we intend to play an active part in bringing literacy to the children & youth of ethnic communities through our Community Libraries program.

We have started a Book Donations Drive for our library & book hub. We welcome you to join us in the global #Read2Grow movement to facilitate reading & learning in tribal communities of India. If you would wish to run a Book Drive, read the details here. Or you could send us your own pick of Children’s Books for our first library in Balrampur.

Thank you for being with us! With your support we started helping tribal artisans of Chhattisgarh distribute their dokra art & Bastar silk sarees to Indians abroad. With your help & financial support, we are progressing with the construction work of our Balrampur library.

Please contact us if you wish to support our programs in 2022.

We are hopeful of 2022! With your help & support we will be opening our first community library this year, we will start the work on the new Varanasi library later in the year & we hope to bring you more ethnic artwork to you in the summer.

We wish you happiness, prosperity & peace!

Sincerely Yours!

Explore India TV team

The post Editorial January 2022 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!

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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.

2021 has been very unique to us in many ways. Going through the perils of a merciless pandemic, we were reflecting on some of these things while penning the December Editorial. In spite of what could have been rather dismal, we made some great progress in our efforts to rediscover Indian ethnic cultures.

We have a lot to be thankful to you.

1. We started off with the Scholarship Program to provide financial assistance to deserving students from ethnic communities to continue with their education. We are flexible to provide this assistance to students from elementary schools all through graduate courses. Read more about our Educational programs here.
2. We also have taken on an ambitious goal of setting up small libraries in various ethnic communities. We have had a few other non-profit organizations reach out to us asking for assistance. However, at this time we are working on building the hub library in Balrampur, Chhattisgarh. Read more about our Community Library programs here.
3. We have also started another program early! To assist the ethnic artists’ communities who have contributed to the Indian heritage for generations doing hand crafted tribal works of art on costumes, show their work to buyers. While these weavers have faced tremendous challenges from commercial organizations that threatened not only the art but also their survivals, that not only did not deter them from continuing their traditional Indian costume design work but also introduce newer designs on traditional motifs. Read more about our Tribal Artists Assistance programs here.

All has not been rosy though! We have fallen behind in one area that is very close to our hearts – our Research Programs. This program is directed to present authentic information on ethnic lifestyles, customs & rituals that often contradict popular knowledge & certainly, in many cases, contradict curriculum based text book information. We have written about a few of these in the past but a lot more exists, especially in their effort to persist some of their customs & rituals.

Overall though, we feel our footsteps, though few, have been in the right directions. And we could not have done this without you.

We are thankful to our sponsors who have been equally passionate to catalyze changes in our ethnic communities. We are thankful to our numerous friends & families who continue to contribute to our several non-profit programs to enhance our tribal communities’ life & cultures.

If you have not connected with us on our social platforms, our social handle is @ExploreIndiaTV. We are on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & Pinterest. Please Follow, Like, Comment & Share your thoughts.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving Week!

The post Happy Thanksgiving first appeared on Explore India TV.

Thank you for being with us! Many of our friends & families have been impacted adversely by the deadly SARS virus, we extend our sympathy & send prayers your way. We hope as an online community we will stand with each other in these trying times & pull through with hope & determination.

As the year ends, we take a look back at how we started and where we are heading as we move into 2022. Early in 2021, while Covid started to raged through countries, that would subsequently affect millions of lives & families worldwide, mercilessly taking lives, leaving people helpless in spite of all the modern developments in medical sciences & diagnostics technologies, we wondered if the old adage that “nature has all the answers” could be true?

We looked into India’s age old ethic communities & their lifestyles. We looked into the tribal communities of Chattisgarh and little did we know that we would find a treasure trove of our own heritage – hidden quietly in front of us, ignored for decades due to our fascination to admire & adopt everything Western & down trod everything Indian!

To our instant gratification, we learnt how well Covid was managed & contained in some of the deep tribal areas of Chhattisgarh. Where modern education is a rarity, medical technologies are beyond reach & understanding of sciences has not penetrated into the communities, such a deadly virus was contained merely by listening to the government workers who were tasked to implement strict separation rules & vaccination protocols.

While Covid killed en-mass in economically stronger countries, in many the virus rifted up political divisions and steered towards an a aggressive mutilations of everything civic, India, the world’s largest democracy, although did not escape the wrath of the virus, still worked silently & rigorously in the ethnic communities. To date, while the disease killed hundreds of thousands in larger Indian cities, the toll was meager in the more rural, tribal communities.

You have also seen us start off with our new programs for 2022 & beyond. Education, research & tribal artisans will be our main focus in the coming years. Many of you have started contributing to our programs, and we are thankful for that. Many of you have shown your sincere interest in helping ethnic artisans, and we will be working closely with you in the coming years!

If you have missed them, take a look at some of our education awareness videos on YouTube. Please Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

We extend our sincere thanks to you for your support and we look forward to walking with you in the new year ahead!

Wishing you & your families a Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year ahead!

Sincerely Yours!

Explore India TV team

The post Editorial December 2021 first appeared on Explore India TV.