Gap Year Yatra is a holistic journey designed exclusively for young people to pause, slow down and prepare themselves to better understand their purpose and work on their dreams. After pausing Rela for a few years, the way forward emerged in the form of Gap Year Yatra. Rela is an adivasi term – a call to come together for celebration through the joy of music, dance and food. Usually, one person
or a group starts chanting ‘Rela’ and move around the village, gathering the entire community to come together for a celebration. A way of life that experiences almost every passing day as a celebration, for some adivasi cultures such as the Gonds, Konda Reddys, Koya and others, Rela marks the beginning and end of marriages, festivals, etc. The attraction of Rela is so strong that if one starts to chant it, every other tribal is drawn in; the hands stop working and the feet pick up rhythm. It is a wave of joy that keeps rising, going higher and higher. We named our initiative Rela – Rhythms of Change in the spirit of coming together, drawn to the celebration that is the larger movement towards sustainable social change. It is with this spirit of coming together, drawn to merge into a movement towards sustainable social change that we named ourselves Rela – Rhythms of Change. Rela endeavours to evolve into a live, vibrant and inspiring facilitated space, co-creating inclusive platforms and empowering communities to gracefully propel themselves towards sustainable social change instead of being “Solution or Service Providers”
Rela – Rhythms of Change is a young initiative registered as “Rela Charitable Trust” under the Indian Trusts Act 1882. Rela engages with the adivasi and other rural and semi-urban communities by co-creating facilitated platforms around various issues like education, sustainability, etc. We also work to document and explore their tradition way of life and knowledge systems and creatively take it back to their communities through programmes engaging children and youth in an effort to turn the “cool factor” towards their traditional heritage. This involves documenting and disseminating their songs, folklores, craft, knowledge, art and food systems. Presently, we have centred ourselves around creating an open and inspiring learning space where children and youth can explore the world around them without fear through both knowledge and experience.
