Jagriti Yatra 2008

On December 24th, 400 Indian youth will leave Mumbai on an adventure that will lead them through 13 Indian cities and over 8000 km. The students will travel throughout India to meet with business leaders and innovative social entrepreneurs in an effort to inspire a new vision for India’s future.

This journey, called the Tata Jagriti Yatra 2008, is sponsored by Tata Group and Jagriti Sewa Sansthan, an NGO based in India that promotes entrepreneurship.

The impact on these college aged students goes well beyond the scheduled tours and interviews. The teaching takes place on and off the train as it moves throughout the country meeting with dignitaries and villagers. Some of the stops include Trivandrum, Kanyakumari, Bhubaneswar, Jamshedpur, Delhi and Tilonia, where they will meet successful business leaders including Bunker Roy of Barefoot College (Tilonia), and Aravinda Eyecare Hospital teams (Pondicherry).

The vastness of India provides a wide array of inspiration and challenges for these young entrepreneurs. Exposure to some of the 415 unique, living languages, diverse spiritual traditions and historic sites, helps to synthesize radically new understandings about modern India. Listening to the interviews of past participants from the Jagriti Yatra website, you can witness for yourself the deep impact; for some of the participants their national journey marked the first time they ever left their village area.

The official website of Jagriti Yatra has these interviews and all the details needed to be part of this absolutely fascinating journey.

This article has been sourced from Ode Magazine

-Nikhil