Alwar · Rajasthan · India — since 1999
1999
Founded in Alwar, Rajasthan
25+
Years of continuous work
12
Community-based schools
100%
Of programme costs published
Chapter 01 — Who we are
Founded in 1999, Nirvanavan Foundation is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation working at the grassroots level with communities that are ostracised and marginalised in the remote areas of Alwar, Rajasthan.
We began with a single question asked of families whose children had never seen the inside of a classroom: what would it take? The answer was never simply a building. It was trust, food, safety, a teacher who stayed, and parents who were treated as decision-makers rather than beneficiaries.
Twenty-five years on, that method has not changed. We stay small enough to know every child by name, and long enough to see them finish.
Chapter 02 — The work
We run community-based schools for children of families pushed to the margins — many of them the daughters and sons of women in the sex trade. Learning here is activity-based, taught in the children's own language, and built to give them a real alternative in life.
Parents — including sex-workers who were long refused a seat at any table — form the School Development Committees that govern our schools. Livelihood training, self-help groups and health outreach grow out of those same meetings.
The Aravalli foothills hold the water and the culture of this region. We plant and tend native trees, revive traditional water bodies, and teach sustainable living as part of everyday school life rather than as a separate subject.
Chapter 03 — Why it matters
A school is not a building. It is a promise that a child's life is not decided by the village they were born in.
Vandana & the Nirvanavan team, Advaita Garden
Chapter 04 — Voices
Chapter 05 — Trust
Small organisations earn confidence the slow way: by saying plainly who we are, who decides, and where the money goes.
Legal standing
Registered under the Societies Registration Act, ACT XXI of 1860. Non-profit, non-governmental, and governed by an accountable committee.
Governance
Programme decisions sit with School Development Committees made up of parents and community members from the villages we work in.
Your money
Donations fund teaching, meals, school materials and plantation work. We are a small charity and we account for every contribution.
Give
A contribution pays for teaching, a midday meal, school materials and the saplings our children plant each monsoon.
DonateJoin
Volunteers teach, build, document and plant — and leave changed. Spreading the word costs nothing and helps just as much.
