A group of highly talented engineers — graduates from BITS, Pilani — held onto their youthful idealism and decided to inject social consciousness to more young minds. Thus was born Grassroutes (pictured right), a fellowship programme “which funds youth to go on road-trips across India, discover and work with changemakers, do their bit to change the world and inspire more youth into social action”.
“Our student days at Pilani showed us a whole different world,” says Keerthi Kiran, who runs Grassroutes. Most of the students, usually from cities, were barely familiar with the problems in rural India, like lack of water, poverty or “what not having power really means”. “The aspirations of rural children were surprisingly different too. That made us realise that there is so much young people can do towards bringing about social change,” says Kiran.
Kiran and his classmates, Abhilash Ravishankar, Sriram, Shravya and Goutam, were part of the Centre for Entrepreneurial Leadership cell at the college. As part of their projects, they worked with women and children in Garinda village near Pilani — an experience which shaped the way they looked at how and what they are.
“We knew we wanted to work with young people for social change,” says Kiran. They set up a group, Youth Factor (Yofa), to “work on engaging youth into social action through novel and exciting initiatives”. Young people need to know why they want to bring about social change. To ask the right questions they need the right exposure and experience. They also need an ecosystem that encourages and feeds social consciousness. For lasting change, challenging opportunities are important as well. These were the founding facts on which Yofa stood.
A mismatch between where they were and what they wanted to do inspired the Yofa group to start Grassroutes in 2008. Grassroutes works in close association with local NGOs in various rural areas across India, and provides their fellows an opportunity to experience a different reality.
The programme centres around a month-long road-trip. Prior to it, the fellows undergo a month-long orientation session, which will give them a perspective on the social sector and rural issues.
During the trip, the fellows closely engage with the local community, work on allotted projects and gather data and also inspirational stories, which post-trip they have to share with a larger community. The applicants are judged for social consciousness, initiative for change and for their articulation.
Grassroutes ran a pilot edition in December, 2008 with three teams and launched their first edition in the summer of 2009 with three teams. Most of the Grassroutes fellows were engineers from IITs, NID and BITS, Pilani. Now, the third edition is on, and has 20 fellows. Besides engineers, they are a motley group from arts, commerce and economics backgrounds, including a few students from the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology.
Grassroutes has a nine-member team running it. Making a difference is what makes them happy.
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