In 1994, the School on Wheels project started with the vision of empowering rural schools and educating children in marginalized areas. The program started with one school bus that traveled through the interiors of the districts of Gujarat bringing training to the teachers, exposure to the children and innovation to the principals of the schools. Today, School on Wheels has reached out to thousands of children across several villages, trained hundreds of teachers, built infrastructure in many schools and changed the lives of millions of villagers.
School on Wheels is an initiative of the Sister Nivedita Foundation. The Foundation was started in Rajkot in 1968 by Smt. Ushaben Jani and Shree. Gulabbhai Jani, both professors of Economics at that time. It started with the vision of propagating education of the highest quality to all children and impacting the lives of people in the community through education. Over the years, Sister Nivedita Foundation has built the Sister Nivedita Educational Complex (SNEC) that cumulatively reaches out to more than hundreds every year, from children in pre-primary school to young adults seeking vocational training. The Sister Nivedita Educational Complex houses the following facilities:
• The Sister Nivedita School in Rajkot houses the pre-primary, primary, secondary and higher secondary schools. It won the Best School of Gujarat Award in 1990-91 by Government of Gujarat
• The Continuing Education Center is for imparting skills and livelihood training for women and young adults. It consists of programs for computer education, home management, garment making, fashion design, spoken English, painting, craft, Karate and self defense, dance and music and short-term vocational as well as summer training classes
• The Principal D. P. Joshi Public Library that houses more than 25,000 books with sections for women, children and audio-visual material
• Pre-Primary Teachers’ Training College
• Sister Nivedita Publications
• Sister Nivedita Best Teacher Award for Pre-Primary, Primary and Secondary Teachers of Gujarat.
• Scholarship grant for girl students, up to standard 12th. And “Educate to Graduate”, higher education interest free loan scholarship to all needy students.
• Dhanvantary Aushadhiya Upvan
• Institute of Quality Education to change mindsets and create great impact on teachers, parents, educationists and students for holistic education and value based society. Our vision is for an inclusive, empowered, happy, stress free and enlightened world in which all live in harmony with values, integrity and civic sense believing in freedom of expression and respect for all.
For almost half a decade now, Sister Nivedita Educational Complex has worked for the cause of holistic and value-based education. Each of the projects aims at promoting “joy of learning” and building knowledge. With this in mind, Sister Nivedita Foundation also publishes a quarterly educational magazine, Samudgar, to share success stories and record best practices among the teaching community of Gujarat.
Sister Nivedita Educational Complex has been visited by dignitaries such as Mother Teresa, ex-President of India APJ Abdul Kalam, Indian-American NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, Field Marshall Manekshaw as well as by Smt. Indira Gandhi in 1975.
Mission:
We believe that every child is divine and has the potential to become an educated successful person with strong values and a sense of responsibility towards the community. To realize this dream, we need to create an ecosystem where everything and everyone that affects the lives of children feeds into this vision. Therefore, on the one hand, school administrators, teachers, parents; communities need to be trained till it becomes norms. On the other hand, school infrastructure, access to books and libraries and hygienic surroundings are necessary.
Our mission is to begin with tackling four fundamental roadblocks that our students face:
1. Enrolment : Every child should be enrolled in primary school
2. Retention : Every child should complete till at least 8th Standard in school
3. Quality of education : The learning imparted should be of the highest caliber
4. Eradication of poverty : Education should be the only means of achieving economic betterment
In order to realize our mission, we employ the following principles:
1. Education is not restricted with the four walls of school. Nature, society, industry, art, sports and social work are all instrumental components of education
2. Education is the only medium of social change
3. The aim of education is to achieve beyond just degrees and certificates; it is to create good human beings
4. The whole process of education should be joyful
Model:
To achieve our mission, we believe in reaching out physically to the communities that are not privileged in terms of economic stature and infrastructure development. Our model is designed in a way so as to bring to such communities the amenities and expertise that they lack. In doing so, we aim to plug the gaps that exist in the delivery of high-quality education. School on Wheels currently works with 88 village schools in 53 villages across 3 districts in the state of Gujarat, India. In these schools, we address the issues of education in a holistic fashion, looking at all possible gaps that need to be plugged. This involves working with all stakeholders in the ecosystem – the school administrator, the teacher, the parents, and the village community and of course, the children themselves. In these schools, we find ways to apply our underlying principles and create interest in everyone in achieving our mission together. We also believe in the value of entrepreneurship and leave it to the individual schools and communities to interpret our programs in their local context and adapt them so as to reap the most benefits from them.