From the Founder’s Desk Achyuta Samanta Founder KISS

Our Impact
25,308 children from indigenous communities are provided with free holistic education from primary
level to Higher education. Over 2 lakh children and adolescents reached through KISS’s initiative with
UNFPA’s Life Skills Education and Adolescence Reproductive and Sexual Health Programme.
Plight of Tribals (TOI,2014)
• Tribal population of India is more than 10.2 Cr
• 8.6% of the total population of the country is tribal
• India has the single largest tribal population in the world
• Literacy rate among tribal population is less than 30% in India
• Approx. 24% of Odisha’s population is tribal
KISS at a Glance:
The state of Odisha is characterized by largest number of indigenous population constituting 24 percent
of the total population of the state. These communities continue to remain as one of the most
marginalised and deprived sections of the society. Realizing the problem behind the sluggish pace of
transformation into mainstream society, Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) was founded by
Dr. Achyuta Samanta in the year 1993.The institute which started with only 125 tribal students in1993
has grown remarkably, in all dimensions, to become the only institution in the world providing free
education from Kindergarten to Post-Graduation with vocational and extracurricular training, free
lodging and boarding, state-of-the-art pedagogy and facilities for more than 25,000 students of tribal
origin. The major objective behind the conceptualization of the institute is to empower the indigenous
children through free holistic and quality education. The students have earned recognition in
academics, vocational capabilities and global recognition in sports.
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