With Mission 30303, social impact creator Siddhesh Lokare hopes to raise Rs 3 crore in funding for 30 rural schools across Maharashtra
Siddhesh Lokare is most impressed by how smart the kids are. “I’m meeting third graders who could solve maths meant for eighth standard students.”
For the past three years, social impact creator Siddhesh Lokare has been on the road — not for fame, but for a cause. His camera and compassion have taken him deep into the heart of Maharashtra, where schools stand quietly forgotten. “I create content around anything that involves human-based storytelling, cause-based storytelling, initiative-based storytelling, or anything in regards to humanity in itself,” he says.
For the last month, he’s been on Mission 30303, which stands for 30 days, 30 schools, and Rs 3 crore. Lokare hopes to empower 30 government schools across the state — institutions that, as he puts it, “are doing amazing, but are also struggling in their own ways, infrastructure-wise, facilities-wise, amenities-wise.” His goal is to make crowdfunding “cool and relatable” while raising '3 crore in 30 days for everything from benches and toilets to AI and robotics labs.
The scale of his mission is ambitious, but it’s rooted in something simple: dignity. “The very idea of this mission is to completely democratise the essence of crowdfunding,” he explains. “We also are working towards rebuilding some schools.”
Lokare’s team provides ration and kits that can sustain families for a month, while finding sponsors to help schools rebuild
Lokare’s work began as storytelling — interviewing children, documenting lives, and giving faces to statistics. But his journey through rural Maharashtra changed him. “There are many learnings that have come along the way. Number one is that transparency is very important when it comes to having communication with schools.”
It’s a reality he’s had to navigate carefully, especially in a system where bureaucracy and silence often go hand in hand. “There are a lot of loopholes in the educational realm when it comes to Maharashtra,” Lokare says. “There is no clarity, transparency, and communication about the exposure of funds and how money is allocated to all these schools.”
Despite institutional failings, he finds hope in teachers who keep the system alive. “The teachers are not happy with what’s happening from the upper level,” he admits. “Yet they’re trying their best for the students and for their own mission.”
Over the past 30 days, he’s travelled more than 3000 kilometres across 10 districts, wrapping up the challenge last Sunday. Along the way, he’s also had to fight misconceptions such as: “These kids do not need digital education, what will they even do with it?”. The biggest one, he says, lies in how lightly society takes the Right to Education. “There is a lot of misinformation and, moreover, a lack of information of any kind.”
What keeps him going are the children he meets. “We are meeting kids who are extremely smart. They come from nowhere, and yet they are smart, wise, and in the lexicon of knowledge,” he says. In Aurangabad, Nashik, and even Nandurbar, he recalls meeting Class 3 and 4 students who could solve math equations meant for Class 8 students.
His travels recently took him to Beed district, to the flood-hit village of Mazalgaon. While the Punjab floods dominated national attention, Lokare was one of the few who turned the lens on the devastation in Beed and Solapur. “The farmers lost everything, the kids lost all their books and stationery,” he says, “We need to know what’s happening to them.”
He and his team are now providing ration and kits that can sustain families for a month, while finding sponsors to help schools rebuild. But above all, he says, “The most important thing that they need is actual awareness. If we are aware of all these things, that is the point where we start from.”
For Lokare, Mission 30303 isn’t just about rebuilding schools. “My hope for this mission is to be authentic, blunt, filterless, honest throughout. Whatever we see, we will show,” he says.
The path hasn’t been easy. “People are trying to push us down. People are trying to take our content down just because they think their credibility is being questioned,” he says. “But if our questions are reaching the higher authorities, I think we have done our part and we are going on the right track.”
Lokare has managed to raise R2.16 crore in the last month, and he’s still accepting donations. If you wish to contribute to his fund, head to his Instagram: @sidiously_.
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