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#EmpowerRuralGraduates #BodhiTreeCentre #BeTheChange
Kanaga aspires to become a Police officer after graduation. The only person who supported her dreams despite having no money to make it a reality is also no more present with her. All she can think of now is to settle for something less and forget her dreams.
Prabhu hails from a small village in Kanyakumari. He has been working from the age of 12 to support his studies. Growing up with a lot of instability in his family, he dreams of creating a change in his family and village. He has already taken his first step by teaching kids in his village.
Murugan has this potential to achieve great things in his life, which seems invisible to his own eyes. The lack of motivation and awareness has made him a person who has just underestimated his own potentials and has settled for smaller dreams.
This is an insight as to how a minor portion of rural graduates in India looks like. There are so many others like them, who are struggling to realize as well as achieve their dreams. There are differences between urban and rural graduates not in terms of intelligence but in terms of access to information due to geographical remoteness, lack of pedagogical resources, cultural backwardness and poor infrastructure. How can background decide someone’s destiny? First generation college goers of rural areas lack awareness about not only what courses are out there but also job opportunities; Little are they aware of the resources and opportunities that they could reach out to match their skills.
What is Bodhi Tree Centre?
BTC endeavors to equip rural college graduates with professional skills in order to empower them to explore and choose the best career option-either joining the workforce or pursuing higher education.
It is a permanent centre, which we, as a team is trying to establish in "Kurippankulam", a remote village in Tirunelveli district. It is our aim to create an effective safe space to provide long-term and effective learning for rural graduates.
We endeavor to provide the rural graduates skill training, support with their education, awareness regarding career opportunities, tap their interests to encourage them to achieve big, mentor them and help them grow holistically into individuals who can achieve their dreams.
Who are we?
We are three young minds from 3 different parts of Tamil Nadu working on this project with Bodhi Tree Skills for our Experiential Learning Module at the Young India Fellowship. We strongly believe in the potential of rural youth who need proper guidance to plan their career and to groom themselves. Having witnessed the actual scenario of these students, we felt the immediate need to help them get what we are receiving in our lives with respect to our education. Our true aspiration to bring a positive change in the lives of rural graduates has brought us to this forum.
Why are we fundraising?
In addition to access to resources, rural graduates are also often limited by financial barriers like training cost and travel cost to urban areas to attend career counseling workshops/ sessions and non-financial barriers like difficulty in understanding. Bodhi Tree Skills aspires to create a level playing field for rural college graduates by removing these barriers so that they could compete with their urban counterparts. We seek your support to set up a well-established training centre for such students so that they could reap the full benefit of this venture.
We, being students of liberal arts, would love to seek the support of many others who would also resonate with our beliefs and help us in making their dreams a reality.
How would we spend the money?
We are aiming to raise a total sum of Rs.3,50,000. This sum would cover the cost of establishing the centre, conducting training sessions for students on a daily basis, and expose them to various learning methods, conduct guest lectures and support them in getting trained in their fields of interests. This amount will help us in running the centre for a period of 120 days.
For 1 student to get trained in our centre for 1 day we would need Rs.100
For 5 students to get trained in our centre for 1 day we would need Rs. 500
For 20 students to benefit from our training centre for 1 day we would need Rs.2,000
To empower 1 student in 120 days we would need Rs. 12,000
Cost for training 20 students for 1 month we would need Rs.60,000
Cost for training 20 students for 120 days we would need Rs. 2,40,000
What would you get?
Apart from bringing a smile to a rural graduate's face and becoming a participant in the journey to empower them, you can expect some messages of love through English words from the non-English speaking first generation learners. We will give you the satisfaction by empowering the rural graduates and you will be able to witness this through letters and videos. If you ever happen to visit this part of the country, you are anytime welcome to visit us and if you are really interested, you can be a guest trainer for one of our training sessions.
We thank you in advance for taking a step to change the lives of several young students!
