If you want to help more people learn about community-run, ad-free messaging services like Prav, now is a good time because we’re running a matching donation campaign—or what you could call the “Buy 1, Get 1 Free” version of “Donate Now”—for our Event Bursaries fund.
The short version: every rupee you donate to Prav in the month of June will result in the Prav Event Bursaries fund receiving two rupees to spend (until we reach ₹50,000 in total) effectively doubling the impact of your donation!
(Also, in case you’re wondering, the opening paragraph was not written by ChatGPT but by a human who actually bothered to manually enter the correct kind of em-dash)
But what are these “Events” in Event Bursaries?
In a socially driven project like Prav, community engagement and spreading awareness is as important as technical code and features. The original mission of Prav was not to collect users: it was help people get off centralised, enshittification-prone communication platforms.
The first step to helping people leave such platforms is for them to realise that alternatives even exist.
This is what many of our community members do at various events around the country: attend, talk to people, learn about what they’re using, and show them what they might be missing. Different volunteers do this in different ways: by running a booth or a stall, giving a talk, or sometimes (often) just walking around and meeting people.
Every interaction is different. Some people might be looking for a service that respects their privacy, while others are more interested in our community-driven model where ordinary people, not just developers or CEOs, decide the direction in which the project moves.
Friends would be surprised to learn they can choose to use different apps that suit their specific purposes, and still be able to talk to each other without switching apps. The technical minded might dig deeper into the open protocol called XMPP that that enables such cross communication and even “account porting” across services. Others just want an app that won’t turn around one day and say, “whoops we’re going to start interrupting you with ads now, whether you like it or not and you can’t do anything about it mwahahahaha”!
So, what is the Event Bursaries fund about?
Community members usually this on a voluntary basis, and do not get paid for spreading the message about Prav. In addition, they often pay for things like food and travel out of their own pocket—something not everyone can afford. The purpose of the Prav Event Bursaries fund is to reimburse some expenses for this kind of presence at events, so that we can enable more people to participate in events. This fund is also used for related expenses such as printing flyers and stickers for distribution at a stall.
Besides attending events, we have been running Prav Mini Meetups on the sidelines of existing events, where Prav community members get to sit and work together in person. We have observed such meetups helps us finish many pending tasks and also builds a team spirit. This in turn motivates people to do more things even after the meetup ends, such as finally get this blog post written. This is especially important as Prav is relatively a new project and many people don’t have a longstanding relationship with other community members.
Donate 1, we get 1 more FREE!! Offer valid till 30th June only. Conditions apply.
One of our community members, Badri (Bursary Team lead and member of the Treasury Team) has offered to match any donations made in the month of June (up to a total of ₹25,000 rupees). This means, if you donate 1,000 rupees, Badri will also donate 1,000 rupees and our Event Bursaries fund receives 2,000 rupees in total. We think this is a great opportunity for us to raise funds to enable volunteers to meet and contribute to Prav outreach and regular tasks. If we manage to raise ₹25,000 rupees in this time, Prav will receive ₹50,000 rupees, which is enough to ensure our presence at several events and could help us even expand to non-technical events.
The funds raised through this campaign will be managed by Bursary Team, and any community member can apply for a bursary. Once approved by the bursary team, they can then claim reimbursements on money spent while attending events to promote or improve Prav (including expenses like travel, accommodation, printing of merchandise, and maybe a few snacks).
You can donate to the fund on our Event Bursaries fundraising page. We can receive money via our fiscal host Navodaya’s Razorpay page (recommended for Indians) or we can also receive money via our Open Collective page (best if you are from outside India).
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