Your contribution will help us accommodate more young people on our campus.
Help us strengthen the idea of knowledge building about youth and youthhood from the grassroots!
In addition you can make general donations to support us.
We interact with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds on a daily basis, coming face to face with their struggles. For most of our students, the anxiety to “not be a burden” on their working class families, and the pressure to “earn and support” their parents and siblings, makes pursuing a higher education an impossibility.
For girls, there is the additional pressure of being “married off” to relieve their parents of the burden of educating them and keeping them at home. For some, it is violence in the family that pushes them to stop studying and to look for shelter and a job.
Being first generation learners, most of them have very limited perspectives and information about work opportunities and educational avenues. Many also travel to Bangalore from neighboring rural taluks to study in colleges and work in part-time jobs before returning back to their villages at night, exhausted by erratic bus schedules and exam time-tables.
The Samvada Campus is a place where youth from marginalised communities will live and learn together, expanding horizons and re-thinking aspirations without fear of ridicule or fear of being forced into professions against their wishes!
We have completed phase 1 of our campus construction at Banjarapalya, near Thataguni on the outskirts of Bangalore with the following features:
We estimate that phase 2 will cost about Rs 42 Lakhs. Any contribution towards this fund will help us accommodate more learners. Your generous donations will be used to construct an additional dormitory, an open amphitheatre, for landscaping and to purchase equipment for dorms and kitchen
We also need a mini bus to transport students and staff from the campus to the nearest metro station which we estimate will cost us up to 18 lakhs.
We are actively looking for funding to continue our research and establish Kanaja as the first of its kind in India.
In the coming years, we hope to build Kanaja into a fully fledged and fully funded independent body within Samvada. With your help, we can encourage youth-led research,intervene meaningfully in the field of youth studies, and develop research methods that are ethical, participatory and rooted in the goal of social justice.