In 1999, a team of three friends, Pankaj and Aparna Kadikar along with Mr. Jayant
Desai, formed Kaivalya Group.
For five years they surveyed the demographics of hilly rainforest of South Gujarat,
India. Along with this, the group decided to initiate an educational program in
some of the rural area schools by introducing projects for the subjects like Mathematics,
English Language and Fine Arts. During frequent visits to many schools, we observed
prevalent classroom confined, bookish teaching where student’s learning was negligible.
The other haunting issue for us was that in these communities, girl child was deprived
opportunities for higher education in every family. Again, various socio-economical
reasons are responsible for the rise in number of school dropouts, especially girls.
These problems are colossal and a potent impediment to the progress of the tribal
in the area. Since then we are exploring ways to promote girl’s education. With
these observations, in 2003, the group of like-minded three trustees Jayant Desai,
Aparna and Pankaj Kadikar decided to form Kaivalya Trust and initiated a project
KEDI - A Place For Self Learning in June 2006.
Mr. Jayant Desai, the founder trustee, actively donated his time by travelling from
Mumbai, to spend four days to teach Kedi students, till he passed away in July 2014.
For the first two years, the founder members went door to door to visit families
of dropout girl students and pursued parents to let their young daughters continue
their education. Out of few tribal families that we visited, 18 parents agreed and
the journey started with the girl students of 6th standard.
Each year we continued adding next higher standard and enrolled some more new learners.
The trust bought a small piece of land near Dharampur. One of the founding trustee,
an Architect by profession, in collaboration with learners, designed the learning
institution that includes academic and boarding facility along with mentor's quarters,
cooking facility, gaushala(cowshed) multipurpose outdoor space and a small agriculture
patch. Generous support from well-wishers and donors came forward.
The family that started with eighteen enthusiastic learners and three founding teachers
in the year 2006, has today grown to nearly one hundred learners studying in accordance
with their capability in any grade from grades 6th to 12th, guided by twelve mentors-teachers,
many volunteers, active trustees along with five support staff members. It also
includes fully functional computer lab, Science and Mathematics lab and modern living
and dining amenities.