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Interactions Meeting people at the grassroots’ can definitely bring in changes to making a better you! DIVYA NAWALE

Ever envisioned taking a bike ride across a desert village exploring schools in Rajasthan, or accompany an unknown casualty in an ambulance in some part of Uttarakhand? How about sitting and talking to saree weavers in Pochampally, or trying to resolve the anguish of farmers in the eastern part of Bengal. Do you think that you can change the world?

Routing change

An enthusiastic bunch of 20-something recent graduates from BITS Pilani believed they could! And that’s how the exciting and revolutionary organisation Youth Factor, also known as YoFa was born. YoFa, the for-impact society, comprising Keerthikiran, Ram, Abhilash, Gowtham, Sonali and Shravya, aims at driving youth into social action, across the country through novel, innovative and stimulating programmess at the grassroots level. Their first initiative ‘Grassroutes’ launched in 2008, is a unique Fellowship Programme which funds urban youth to go on road-trips across India exploring rural areas, meeting change-makers, working with social-ventures, and learning developmental issues through community retooling.

Says Keerthikiran, one of the founding members and Program Director for Grassroutes, “From a practical viewpoint, we’ve seen that young people need to be given an opportunity to widen their horizons. They need to be sensitised to the problems of communities in rural areas and also discover ways of investing their skills in the problem-solving process.The programme starts with a pre-trip orientation- a month long process where the fellows embark on a steep learning curve about the various facets of the social sector and the tools required as a change-agent. A two-day residential event called ‘Day Zero’ is held at IIM Bangalore just before the road-trip. These can be small initiatives that may go unnoticed –— but can be meaningful contributions for the communities they work with.”

Learning starts

“Day Zero was a day of listening to some very experienced people. Definitely one of the most inspiring days of my life”, says Abhishek Nayak, one of the previous Grassroutes fellows. The teams then start their journey and travel to their mapped non-profit organisations based on their interests and the requirements. Each team spends about seven to ten days at the grassroots level, interacting with change-makers, observing & understanding issues, and also lends a helping hand to the organisation. The first ever Grassroutes National Fellowship Programme hosted by Yofa, was the Winter Edition in Dec 2008 when three young and vibrant teams comprising students, engineers, doctors, bloggers, photography-enthusiasts and designers chosen from all over the country, wandered into different directions (Chattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu) to under-go life changing experiences and coming to terms with terrible facts like the status of mal-nourished children and the plight of women(especially Widows) in these areas.

In the summer edition of 2009, another bunch of free-spirited travel-enthusiasts set off to work on three different causes in three different locations. Says Anurag Dutta ,one of the fellows who went for the Summer edition “Grassroutes is best understood and experienced when you throw your preset notions away and stop trying to analyse everything that you come across. It can change you in ways you didn’t know you could be changed.” With NGO Partners like Jan Swasthya Sahyog, WWF India, Aksharakriti and ACCORD, Grassroutes is poised to bring about a evolution in Social Change.

Divya, is a first year, Masters in International Relations at Hult International student, doingBusiness School, London.

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