Tribal youth, who empowered 2000 tribal and Dalit youths with higher education, looks for support

A tribal youth from a nomadic tribe in Vidarbha, who not only made it to the foreign shores for education on the basis of his own merit, but also showed the path of quality higher education to over 2000 tribal and Dalit youths from across the backward regions of India, now seeks support for sustaining the social cause. Raju Kendre, an alumnus of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and a Chevening scholar who completed his post-graduation from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, runs the Eklavya India Foundation for the last eight years. It has so far reached five lakh underprivileged Dalit and tribal youths from over 25 States. Almost all of them are first-generation learners in their families.

“Eklavya India Foundation empowers first-generation university students from historically marginalized communities – Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Nomadic and De-notified Tribes, and Other Backward Communities, representing over 1 billion people in India, which is 12% the world’s population. We facilitate their successful career transitions by accessing world-class higher education, breaking the poverty cycle, and inspiring them to become community role models,” Raju Kendre said.

Many of these students who have attended any of the 700 workshops or residential programmes run by the Foundation, have been able to gain admission to leading national and international universities, gaining prestigious fellowships. Today, not only are they empowered, but the 600-odd alumni have become the role models and community aspirations for the marginalised communities across the country.

Take the examples of Nazar Mohideen from Kerala or Eknath Wagh from Maharashtra. Both the youth belong to marginalised communities, and are today pursuing postgraduate courses at the Harvard University. Nazar studies Public Health at the Harvard Medical School, while Eknath pursues his post-graduation in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

“Over the past eight years, we’ve dedicated approximately one million hours to mentorship and career guidance. Our students have received scholarships totalling more than 7 million USD from government programs, private trusts, and globally renowned institutions. Our mission is empowering the under-represented Indian communities by dismantling education and career barriers, cultivating equitable leadership, fostering social mobility, and building a just society,” he said. Raju was recently awarded the British Council’s Global Alumni Award for social action.

As a young man who had himself faced challenges while accessing education, he found his calling in empowering other youths. His parents, married before they even turned 10 years old, could not complete even primary education. “At 18, I dreamed of becoming an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer – a prestigious bureaucratic role that I believed could bring change to people like my parents, who spent their entire lives working on farms but never experienced a better future. In 2011, I travelled 300 miles from my village to the metro city of Pune, hoping to access quality higher education - becoming the first in my entire generation to aspire for a university degree. My mother had given me a few thousand rupees - all she could save - but it was not enough to survive in the city. Despite my good academic record, I struggled. I had no financial support, no guidance, and no understanding of how to navigate life in a big city. Within a few months, I was forced to drop out from the Pune University,” Raju Kendre talked about his journey.

“I felt like an outsider in the big city. My language, culture, and dialect were not accepted in that elite system. I felt isolated, overwhelmed, and alone - just like many first-generation students who experience university for the first time in India. We often hear about suicide cases and dropouts in this so-called “meritocratic” system, where many struggle to fit in and succeed. After dropping out of university, I returned to my village and continued my studies through distance learning. During this time, I joined a grassroots organization working with indigenous communities in central India. Over two years, I witnessed their struggles - children travelling over 100 miles just to get a basic degree, and entire communities lacking basic resources and opportunities. That’s when I realized that becoming a bureaucrat, working in an office far removed from the real issues, was not my true calling. I wanted to work directly with my community. I saw children fighting to get primary-secondary education, walking miles to attend school, and generations trapped in poverty because they had no access to opportunities. This first-hand experience, combined with my own journey, sparked my passion to create real change,” he said. This made him join the prestigious Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

Today, eight years after laying the foundation stone of Eklavya India Foundation, Raju reaches out to the marginalised communities across India, but particularly those in the tribal belts of central India. “Our current annual expenditure is around Rs 1.5 Crore. We receive support from the Echoing Green Fellowship, the Nudge Foundation, and the Mariwala Health Initiative, along with small individual donations and partnerships with smaller CSR contributors. But we have been operating out of a rented campus. We also want sustained funding to expand out work further, to buy our own place for holding regular workshops and training programmes. We are located in barren lands. There is no support system here. For any networking or support, we need to travel to Delhi or Mumbai. All the top universities are located there. There are no good colleges around us. We want to start a central institution in central India, which has dense tribal population. For that, we need good institutional support and mechanism,” he said.

He now hopes that large corporates will come ahead to support him reach out to more youth from the marginalised communities.