"My aim is to give them an education that will make them proud of their culture. These people should grow up proud of their grandfather's culture, not shunning it." - Baba Amte

Education is the key to lead towards social and economic development. And, we are aware that education does not happen in an isolated manner, it has to be woven with life threads, namely local environment, socio-cultural legacy and individual aspirations. This philosophical understanding inspires us to set up an educational complex at Jinjgaon village, around 25 km from LBP campus, Hemalkasa (District Gadchiroli, Maharashtra).

This educational complex - Lok Biradari Shiksha Sankul - shall gradually grow up embracing multiple institutions, interfacing with each-other, in a campus based at Jinjgaon village. Since, as mentioned above, education must be holistic and it should be rooted in local environment of the learners, the school education will be closely linked with apprenticeship, entrepreneurship and local communities.

Sankul shall serve children, youths, women, local artists and artisans, in a way entire community around.

This will also be a model of a sustainable life, particularity for the people around the globe who realize that the so-called modern lifestyle is unsustainable, and leading us to the global warming, social chaos and trapped us in the vicious circle of consumerism-inflation-depression. Therefore the Sankul shall be a model of a lifestyle which is sustainable, self-reliant and is rooted in the community and the ecology around.

In its true sense, it will be a place for mutual learning and sharing among literate & non-literate, rural & urban, tribal & non-tribal ... everybody will come here to learn something to teach something as well, acknowledging and respecting each-other. As, while articulating the dream of new India, Baba Amte has said, "From the most ancient times, it has been recognized that any orderly community or nation must have two pillars: Mutual recognition of rights and Mutual cooperation for the common good. The New India will pay special attention to the strengthening of these two pillars."

Lok Biraradari Shiksha Sankul will grow gradually and organically. There could be a few initiatives seeded with its inception. These shall be:

Preschool - a fun-house for toddlers' exploration

"Joy is more infectious than disease." - Baba Amte

The foundation determines strength of the structure. Development of brain and mental processes are alacritous at the age 4 to 8, children start to explore the world around with their senses and mental tools, and also begin to make per-concepts, articulating their findings and understanding in spoken languages.

Hence, a preschool (balwadi) will be established at the Sankul to nurture their physical and mental growth, which is crucial for this age group.

This shall be a play school, exploration field, a site for socialisation with peers as well as with young adults and elders ones in an open learning space for children aged 4 to 6 of Jinjgaon and nearby hamlets/villages. At the initial phase of 5 years, we shall be able to accommodate around 50 children in the balwadi.

A couple of trained young women and men from local communities will facilitate to the children in balwadi. Having local youths will be an advantage for children, because they are familiar with local languages and customs; at the other hand, local youth will get an opportunity to serve kids from their own communities.

Lok Biradari Prakalp will organise in-house training to these youths and/or send them to the relevant institute/s for the same.

School - a learning space to collaborate head, heart & hand

School education is a vital institute to share and acquire collective knowledge by the humankind; it also provides us an opportunity to the individual to explore herself as an inseparable unit of the community, as an active and critical participant of democratic nation-state, as an innovative and productive human recourse to the economic life and as a sensible human being in this global society.

As rightly pointed out by M.K. Gandhi, the present schooling, "ignores the culture of the heart and hand, and confine itself to the head." Therefore, we are looking forward to establish an institute that shall be all inclusive. Collaboration among head, hand and heart is must to materialise the goal of a holistic education.

Salient features of the school will be:

1. This will be an English medium CBSE school from grade I to X. (In case we did not get CBSE accreditation, we shall use NCERT textbooks as teaching aid)
2. This will be a day school.
3. We shall begin with Grade 1 in the first year and develop it up to grade 10 gradually.
4. Pupils enrolled from nearby villages shall be staying with the willing families in Jinjgaon village as a member of their family. This will be a share and care model. Parents of the pupil shall provide foodstuff, clothes etc. in kind as to the guardian family.
5. Young people from local communities will be recruited and/or groomed as teachers, as far as possible.
6. The school shall encompass academic teaching-learning processes along with activity based hands on experiential learning pedagogy which will be interlinked with laboratories, libraries and apprenticeship.

Vocational training

Economic stability gives us a scope to think and look beyond our immediate needs. This is more crucial for the citizens living in deprived, disadvantaged and marginalized regions of our beloved nation. Jinjgaon village is situated in one of such regions.

As Baba Amte says: "You cannot get a hearing from people whose stomachs are empty, nor will you find understanding in deserted homes. Stomachs must be satisfied if people are to listen to reason: there must be life in the houses for people to listen to reason; there must be life in the houses to people to come to their senses." It is very much required to enable young people of this region to earn their livelihood in a respectable manner.

One can find many young people roaming around, killing time in non-productive activities. Due to lack of proper guidance and inappropriate school education, these youths are dropped out or better to say - left out - from the process of becoming an aid as human resource in the national economy.

Lok Biradari Shiksha Sankul shall institute a handful of vocational training courses for young women and men; these vocations will be rooted in the local socio-cultural environment, indigenous produces and present day needs. In this way, the vocations would emerge from a blend of traditional knowledge system and present day requirements. Baba Amte has put an ideal with a caution before us: "Science and appropriate technology are sedulously promoted, but at the same time, care is to taken not to infect damages on nature, especially not irreparable damage." We will try our best to accomplish it by sensible use of appropriate technology available.

Here is a list of potential vocations & courses we shall offer:

Lok Biradari Shiksha Sankul will be a multidimensional complex to serve the needs of local communities. Hence, our approaches towards it would be dynamic and pluralistic in nature. At one hand, we shall focus to value and carry on traditional knowledge of nutrition, art and craft, we will also introduce latest literature available for academic disciplines, knowledge generation and for pleasure of reading itself; we may use indigenous methods for food processing, preservation and oil extraction as well as computer training and its use for the betterment of the local community.

To summarise, we can say that our approach would be to preserve and celebrate indigenous knowledge and the values behind it, with conscientious use of present day methods and technology.

Our motto is: "Charity destroys, work build up a person." Hence, our efforts would be to utilise local resources, appropriate technology and to help young women and men to become skilled entrepreneurs.

Every endeavor needs resources to sustain, flourish and to adorn; so it can become an expendable model for rest of the world. Apparently, its sustainability depends on the resources the model can generate within itself, but as we know, every innovation and experiment requires support from outside, particularly in terms of finance, Lok Biradari Shiksha Sankul shall look at both the directions simultaneously. Hence, we will explore and identify resources available around us and also seek support in various ways from our well-wishers and like-minded organisations.

Here, we have jotted down a few types of resources we are looking for:

Human resources

A team of agile and dynamic people can only take this project forward. So, team-building is a crucial factor of this initiative. As we can visualise so far, we need efficient people to uphold following responsibilities:

Network

Lok Biradari Prakalp has an honored repute and a long history of serving people at one of the most deprived region of the nation. The efforts and services of Dr. Prakash Amte and his family are recognised and rewarded at various level by the governments, by the civil societies, consortium of professionals, charity organisations and missionaries, industry and business associations, and by many celebrated and ordinary individuals.

Consequently, we do have a far-flung network of supportive organizations and versatile individuals. We would seek to utilise this pool of well-wishers for better function of the project. These are the core areas where we see its engagement, that will be mutually helpful:

1. Capacity building of the teams (teaching, management, production etc.)
2. Sharing knowledge / expertise as volunteer / intern in specific field of:
   1. Teaching-learning (academic disciplines i.e. Mathematics, English language, Science, Social Sciences)
   2. Teaching-learning (non-academic disciplines i.e. art & craft, storytelling, pottery, computer, gardening etc.)
3. Documentation (reports, case-studies, interviews, photographs, videos, blog, website etc.)
4. Support in vocational training listed above
5. Disseminating products
6. Spreading word, finding appropriate people and motivate them to contribute to the project.
7. Other
   1. To help accommodate students passed out from the sankul as employees in appropriate organisations.
   2. Accommodate passed out students and/or recommended youths in the course/internships/apprenticeships in appropriate organisations.

Infrastructure

Impact of education manifests in each and every field of life, it brings about qualitative change in life; at the same time, it is hard to measure it in quantitative manner. As we visualize, our frontmost aim is to bring about a qualitative change in the life of the people in this area, that will reflect in terms of economic stability, level of awareness about self and society and an avidity towards school education of the young generation. As eminent scholar Amartya Sen says: "Human development, as an approach, is concerned with what I take to be the basic development idea: namely, advancing the richness of human life, rather than the richness of the economy in which human beings live, which is only a part of it."

We would like to set a few quantitative milestones for ourselves, that might help us keep on track, guide our journey and to give us a sense of achievement as well as of challenge.

For the first phase of next five years, we promise ourselves to:

1. In terms of qualitative change, we would have some young people in the region as
   1. Skilled / young entrepreneurs
   2. Holistic learning taking place for the children.
   3. Arts & craft, and other indigenous knowledge is being celebrated and shared with rest of the world.
   4. Young parents take school education more seriously for their children / School education becoming a priority for the young parents.
   5. Increase in level of social awareness.
2. In terms of quantitative change
   1. Around 300 to 500 children participating in holistic learning processes.
   2. Around 200 to 300 young women and men get employment.
   3. Significant growth in per-capita or per household (whichever convenient to us) income of the resident of the region (we have to do a baseline or rely on some authenticity data to show it).
3. In terms of documents
   1. Case studies / stories of young entrepreneurs.
   2. Narrative reports.
   3. A pool of photographs.
   4. Videos
4. Other factors
   1. Organic interlinks between tribal communities and modern world employment generation and economic growth.
   2. Reduced migration.