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.

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.

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.

Late November 2021 we were both blessed & granted permission to set up a library for the Kabir Chaura Math & Ashram in Varanasi. This spiritual organization provides free education to the needy & we hope our library would encourage kids & youth of the school to take to reading.

Balarampur is the home to numerous small ethnic communities, mostly hunter gatherers in nature, and have always struggled to adopt the mainstream educational systems. While government funds have always been available to schools & to provide meals to the students, these have not helped the communities with education in the last 100 years!

Our Approach to Facilitating Learning

We believe learning, especially for kids, is a matter of encouraging curiosity, playfulness and experimentation. With that in mind, our small libraries are planned to be colorful with a playful atmosphere with toys and learning gadgets & educational. Electronic gadgets like tablets & chrome books makes learning interesting & systematic.

Like most of the rural areas in developing countries, remote tribal communities have significant challenges that have to be overcome before we can anticipate a healthy presence of tribal children in the libraries and consequent good use of the facilities.

While most of it is a matter of time, several infrastructural deficiencies add significantly to the roadblocks. Availability of electricity and clean drinking water for example are two major hurdles we are working through right now. We want the children to learn the importance of cleanliness and be able to have clean drinking water while in the libraries.

There is always hope!

While the tribal kids are our biggest encouragement, there are numerous non-profit organizations & individuals like us who are equally committed to making a small difference in various communities. Unfortunately, the very phrase Non Government Organization is marred with news of fraud & misappropriation of funds, there seem to be a new wave of social workers who are etching a true story of what social work really is! They are our inspirations as well, keeping our work move forward one step at a time!

#JoinUs #Read2Grow

You can help in our efforts & be a part of our community now! Click here to read more.

If you wish to donate books, buy learning devices & apps or support us financially please write to us at exploreindia.tv.team@gmail.com for details.

The post Free Libraries for Tribal Students 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.

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.