SELF SUSTAINED MODEL OF EDUCATION TO RESOLVE AGRARIAN CRISES

Vikalpa is a NGO working for the agrarian suicides issues in Vidarbha ( India ) and trying to find out out sustainable solution as short charrity efforts of government is not yielding desired results. Affordable Agro-centric enterprise based schools from primary level could be a long term solution to the agrarian crises so that new generation of agrarian society with adequate knowledge of agriculture could be developed to adopt technologies and innovations coupled with education in market and enterprise management .

Top priority to food security need no emphasis so to agriculture and other natural resources to feed ever growing population within limited land resources. Inspite of 55% of population dependent on agriculture as basic livelihood mean, its contribution in GDP is just 13%. The main reason is that our education system agriculture has been grossly ignored as a essential subject. Today the agriculture has no more remained as a traditional knowledge being inherited from one generation of agrarian to next generation by default and the children are reluctant to go with parents and parents are moving in urban area as agriculture remained un productive of various reasons. Hence there are no skill human resources who wish and can continue in agriculture sector with new technologies. Thus we need to consider and adopt major reforms in our education especially in rural areas and agriculture as main stream subject needs to be introduced from primary education its self.

Thus Vikalpa felt need of one school which can integrate basic science ,math other subjects into agriculture science to as create a new generation of farmers to adopt technologies and reverse the trend of migration of rural to urban for want of livelihood .

Since government can not do with innovative concept as all new schools in Maharashtra are to be opened under Maharashtra Self Finance School ( establishment and regulation) Act 2012 where education will become cost prohibitive for rural community who is already in stress . We need to have education at affordable cost and therefore need to work on innovative school which could be affordable and community supported and must run on self generated finance.

Our vision is to create a global rural school where future entrepreneurs will be nurtured with the help of an Inclusive Learning-Friendly environment.

Self sustained and non aided Abhyudaya Global Village School has been set up by VIKALPA as its dream project to address the issues referred above with following features which are flexible for adopting continuous modification as & when required suiting to geographical & resource based variances.

The school has been established on 10 acre farm land of the voluntary organization equipped with demonstrations techniques, technologies, processes related agriculture including horticulture , animal husbandry etc. This is being strengthened by various technologies and processing for school run agri-enterprises and use of modern agriculture equipments to adopt new technology.

School run agri-enterprises are meant to augment financial support to make school self reliance example: organic farming, marketing, milk collection & processing, Dal Mill, Oil mills, Bee Keeping , Food Processing, Seed Bolls preparation raising nursery of the flower and vegetables for kitchen gardens. The school runs on the principle of affordable education for the resource deficit community using school run enterprises as which will not only generate income for the school but will give hand on teaching to the students.

School Name : Abhyudaya Global Village School, www.agvshool.in 

Location: Cluster of 15 villages around Pench National Park in Saoner Block of Nagpur District Maharashtra India 

Present Strength: 244 with 50% girls