Into its 16th Edition, Gramya Manthan is a 10-day transformative leadership development program - designed to expose Indian youth to the diverse knowledge system of rural India while focusing on inner transformation, systemic awareness, and community development.

For over a decade, one of the longest-running rural immersion programs in the country, Gramya Manthan, envisions self and - in the long term - systemic and structural development through equal and participative dialogue between urban and rural India.

The 10-day-long program is designed to intertwine modalities to serve three major components - self-introspection, rigorous immersion, and social-emotional learning. While these threads are pulled at different times in the course of the ten days - each thread remains connected to the other and held firmly.

In the past decade, a few hundred young individuals from all across the country participated in this journey of knowing oneself and the world. More than half of these individuals are currently committed to social change and transformation in diverse fields - many of them are social entrepreneurs, leaders, and committed professionals. 

If you wish to understand the nuances of - society, development, knowledge systems, caste, and gender dynamics, leadership, social change - without separating them from ‘self’ -but rather in relation to self - then this journey is for you. 

This time Gramya Manthan will take place in the heartland of India - in the villages of Madhya Pradesh. During the course of the program, we will be staying and learning at Jeevika Ashram, based in Indrana Village near Jabalpur city which is a space dedicated to documenting and preserving local indigenous knowledge and cultural traditions and practices in collaboration with local artisans. Inspired by the teachings of Late Shri Ravindra Sharma of Adilabad , it was started 7 years ago by Ashish and Ragini Gupta and has become a place for practice, demonstration and celebration of diverse practices ranging from iron work, bamboo craft, sculpting and theatre. 

Program Details

Dates

The 16th edition of Gramya Manthan shall happen from 21st June - 30th June, 2024

Location & Weather

  • Temperatures vary in a wide spectrum during day and night between 28 to 40 degrees Celsius.

  • The upcoming edition will take place in Indrana Village, Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh

Travel & Accommodation

• Food, stay, and all other mandatory requirements during the program will be taken care of.

• Stay will be basic with shared accommodation and bathroom facilities

• Participants will have to reach Jabalpur by Day 0 night or early morning on Day 1.

Financial Contribution

Putting together all the different parts of this whole program incurs significant financial cost, which includes costs of Facilitation, Program Design, Food, Accommodation, Transport, Material and logistics, Mentoring, etc.


The cost per participant for 30 participants is 42,000 INR. Thanks to a generous donor , we have been able to subsidise it to Rs 30,000 per participant.

We hope that you are able to cover the full cost of the program. However, we understand that for some participants, this amount might be difficult, so we have a few options of partial financial assistance available for those who truly need it.

The range of contribution along with some partial financial assistance slots is Rs 15,000 to Rs 30,000 to accommodate the varied paying capacity of our participants. The details of the same are available in the application form.

To make it accessible for participants from difficult socio-economic backgrounds, we are open to five scholarship slots.

An Invitation: For those who have the means, please consider stretching your budget a bit more so that we can offer more financial assistance to those coming from challenging and marginalised backgrounds. Your generosity will go a long way to help us accommodate someone who has many structural obstacles to break to access alternative educational programs like this one.

Know more about the contribution model here.

Eligibility

  • Program is open to both Indian and International applicants.

  • Participants in the age group of 18-30 years will be preferred.

  • Applicants below or beyond these age limits will be duly considered on case-to-case basis.

  • We have kept 5 slots reserved for people from ethnic, sexual, and cultural minorities. We strongly encourage Dalits, Adivasis, Bahujans, LGBTQ and people from other such structurally marginalised groups to apply.

Note: The maximum number of participants that we can host is 30. Applications will close once we reach this count.

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