Eklavya’s study abroad programme will ‘create leaders with empathy’: Raju Kendre

New Delhi: In 2017, Raju Kendre set up Eklavya India Foundation to promote higher education and grassroots leadership among first-generation learners in Maharashtra. It has been mentoring students from marginalised communities to pursue education in India’s premier educational institutions and now, it wants to send such students abroad through its Global Scholar Programme (GSP). In 2022, Kendre featured in ‘Forbes 30 Under 30 list’. Hailing from a farming family, Kendre spoke to Careers360 about the inspiration for GSP and why they are focusing first on law, media, public policy, development, humanities and social sciences.

Q. What was the motivation behind starting Eklavya India Foundation ?

A. A lot of people have to move to Pune from the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra for higher studies. I, too, had gone to Pune 11 years ago. I had to leave my studies in Pune after four-five months due to financial, social and other reasons. I returned to my village in Buldhana district and completed my undergraduate studies through distance learning.

I belong to a nomadic tribe and I worked in the tribal regions of Maharashtra for two years during my undergraduate studies. During my work with an NGO, I saw that students from marginalised communities have potential but don’t get opportunities as they do not possess soft-skills. Later, I joined Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Tuljapur for master’s and saw that the representation of marginalised communities students in such courses is not good.

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When I was in TISS in 2014, I used to provide career guidance to marginalised students in villages. Later, I got Maharashtra chief minister fellowship and started teaching in a college. Considering all my experiences and the problems in the education system, I started Eklavya India Foundation with a pilot batch of seven students in Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district. Now, we have more than 700 students.

Q. How does Eklavya Foundation select students?

A. We select students on the basis of several social and economical indicators. We ask students to fill the Google forms while applying for mentorship. Through their responses, we check whether the student is from a marginalised community and has studied in vernacular languages and select them. We don’t charge any fee for training but we charge a nominal fee for workshops.

Since 2017, Eklavya India Foundation has been mentoring students. We help students crack competitive entrance exams and interviews in elite universities.

So far, We have trained more than 1,000 students and they have secured admission in good colleges and universities. Around 75 to 85 percent of students mentored by us have secured admission in big central universities and bagged scholarships for higher education. We are currently providing mentorship and coaching to more than 700 students. For UG and PG courses in Indian higher education institutes, we have students mainly from Maharashtra; for the Global Scholars Programme (GSP), we have students from all over India.

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Q. Why was the ‘Global Scholars Programme’ started? What are its aims ?

A. We see that Indians belonging to privileged castes and classes have been going for studies in all major institutions of higher education, like Ivy league colleges, Oxford University and Cambridge University. This is happening even after 75 years of our independence.

I went to London to pursue MSc in Development Studies at University of London on the UK government's Chevening scholarship in 2021. I have completed my degree now. In London, I saw first-hand that representation of Indian marginalised communities in these global institutions is very low. I think less than 5% of Indians in prestigious institutions belong to the marginalised communities. Students from marginalised communities have limited knowledge of scholarships and other things.

Babasaheb Amebedkar is our inspiration and we launched the GSP on April 14, 2022, the birth anniversary of Dr BR Ambedkar. The GSP was in mind even before I went to London for studies but it was launched this year after proper planning and building of a mentor community. The aim is to create global leaders with a vision of social justice and empathy. We want to create global leaders from the grassroots in the field of law, media and development sectors and we will start training students for the science, technology, engineering and medicine (STEM) field and PhD next year.

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Q. How many students are enrolled in GSP?

A. For GSP, we have received more than 400 applications till now and we scruitnised the application forms. We selected students who are in need of mentorship and have the will power to become global leaders. We did not consider the academic qualifications of students for this programme in this year but we may include that also from next year.

We have more than 100 mentees under GSP and 70 percent of them will apply for scholarships and admission this year. We have a community of 100 mentors from Ivy league, Harvard University, Cambridge University, Oxford University and others. We held a bootcamp in June 2022 at Wardha, Maharashtra, and we held a workshop in November 2022 in Nagpur. More than 60 students from 14-15 states attended the events.

Q. How will the GSP programme run ?

A. In GSP, students will attend three workshops or bootcamps for three days in a year. In the workshops and bootcamps, we will help students gain knowledge about scholarships, admission process, application process etc. The classes will be held in blended mode. We have provided one mentor to each mentee to take care of the students and help them in every possible way.

Since there is not enough representation of marginalised communities in global higher education institutes, only one-third of our mentors are from marginalised communities who have experiences to share with students. The others are people with empathy who want to contribute towards the upliftment of marginalised communities through education.

Under GSP, we will also train students for the National Overseas Scholarship (NOS) and other state government scholarships for education in foreign universities. We will train students for global scholarships like Erasmus Mundus and DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst).

Q. How do you manage funds for the different programmes?

A. We face a lot of challenges when it comes to fundraising. We receive funding from Bengaluru-based Nudge foundation for UG and PG programmes of Indian universities. Currently, we don’t have any funding for GSP. We are trying to raise funds for GSP too. We tried crowdfunding online but did not get big support.

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Q. What are the future plans of Eklavya India Foundation ?

A. We have three centres in Maharashtra – Aurangabad, Nagpur and Yavatmal – and we are focusing on having centres in tribal-dominated areas of central India.

We want to keep GSP separate from other Ekalvaya Foundation programmes. We want to make GSP big and we are working for resource mobilisation. In GSP, we are currently focusing on masters courses in social sciences, law and media and we want to scale GSP by adding STEM and PhD. We want to provide mentorship to 250 students in one batch of GSP in coming years.

We want a minimum of 2,000 global scholars in the next one decade. We are also aiming for 10,000 admission enrollment from first generation learners and marginalised communities in Indian universities.