Youth
At Grampari we work to nurture, teach, and inspire youth, who can bring unlimited energy, spirit, and innovation to their villages. Our youth projects aim to educate youth on living with moral values and get them involved in village development.
Festivals can be an amazing time for the community to come together and celebrate. Yet they can also tend to produce unwanted environmental and social impacts- gulal (colored powder) is often made from harmful chemicals, loud music played for hours disturbs community harmony, and idols are often made from unsustainable materials. We work with youth to promote environmentally friendly practices in festivals, such as using idols made from mud.
For youth to succeed as leaders, they must not only work hard on their school assignments but also on their behavioral and moral development. We do engaging, fun, and intensive presentations in high schools and colleges that focus on cultivating honesty, purity, love, and selflessness in youth. We have also recently started doing presentations on the impacts of mobile phones, enabling youth to understand phone addiction's effects on them as individuals and in their relationships, as well as how to use technology for constructive purposes.
Youth Involvement in Village Development
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In Vivar, youth have taken on the responsibility of fighting forest fires. They go out of their way to protect their local ecosystem, sometimes going barefoot in the middle of the night with sticks and water pumps to fight the fires. This has led to an increase in spring water for the village.
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Youth from Vivar, Akhegani, and Dhawali planted trees in the barren land of their respective village with different indigenous plant species like Banyan, Fig, Custard apple and Jamun. Inspired by them, villagers from Rajpurewadi also planted trees in their village.
Achievements 2015-2022
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4 Yuva Manch (Youth groups) formed, with over 800 members
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Libraries set up in 5 villages
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Worked in 10 high schools and 3 colleges, reaching over 4,500 students
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22 Youth Mandals with over 1200 members celebrated eco friendly festivals
Trust-building programme
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The Urban-Rural Connect, a part of the Trust-building programme, is a platform to bring together children from urban and rural schools. The programme aims to foster friendships, dispel preconceptions and build empathy between the two groups.
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Children from Kalmadi High School, Ganeshnagar Pune visiting Janta Madhamik School, Karandi as part of the Urban-Rural Connect Programme.
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Children working together in rice fields in Karandi. The urban children getting to experience various aspects of village life.
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Children sharing their reflections after quiet time.
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Children from both schools brainstorming to come up with ideas how to continue the Urban-Rural connect.
