Program Kasthuri

In India, 65%of the population lives in rural areas around 33% are supposed to be poor. Notably, 30% of them are under 20 years of age.

 Of the 250 million youngsters in Rural India, only 10% take the 12th standard exam. National Statistical Survey 2017 states that only 5% of rural boys & 2 % of rural girls graduate. In effect, a minuscule % of the population educates themselves. Imagine what this means from the human development standpoint when house 40% of the worlds youth population. 

The reasons for this are, 

1. Money is in short supply & education is not treated as an investment. 
2. Access to colleges & junior colleges dramatically reduces once they cross schooling. 
3. Deprioritising of Girls education- 20% of rural girls still get married by 16. 
4. Finally & very importantly, there is no employment in sight - They don’t have role models who inspire them to emulate.

Swadha creates rural champions by supporting them between 11th to graduation for 5-6 years. Our Support includes funding all costs related to education, job readiness training & accommodation during these years. To make our beneficiaries transform holistically, we invest 2000 hours into enhancement activities such as 1 X 1 mentoring, digital tools, mental wellness training, English education & summer internships. The mode of such training is a combination of offline & online. Offline classes in Swadha owned training centres in Tier 4 towns and online through tabs & airtel connections sponsored by us. We culminate our Support by helping beneficiaries to get a white-collar job. 

Today, we support 172 students from 150 villages. 60% of them are rural girls who have broken several glass ceilings until now. 80% of whom we support are first-time graduates breaking generational ignorance & illiteracy.  

We need your funding & Support to help grow this initiative by creating more learning centres, employing key staff, providing digital literacy to expand rural youth’s knowledge, creating industry-specific job readiness programs, & VERY IMPORTANTLY for enrolling more such students. 

1. We want to invest in the education & job readiness of one poor rural student at a time and use them to lift their family out of Poverty. 
2. We want to create girls who break the societal inhibitions to empower themselves & becomes champions of resilience. 
3. Create a proven model to eradicate Poverty by creating equitable access to education and opportunities. 
4. Address inequalities in the quality of rural vs urban education. 
5. Provide access to employability options in cities that are currently robbed from the poor for no fault of theirs.