Yatra Projects

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Established in 2009 on the border of India’s most famous tiger reserve, this school was established in conjunction with an Indian NGO (GSK). We now support 150 students at this school, delivering a personalised curriculum that is reviewed daily and includes an excellent sports program to supplement the academic one. The students are drawn from 4 local villages, on land donated by a local farmer whose dream was to see his children at school rather than working in the fields.

Incorporating sport and physical activity into the curriculum has led to several success stories with students representing at state and, recently, national level in their chosen sports with the awarding of educational scholarships to these students. Yatra is a firm believer in the doctrine of “a healthy mind in a healthy body”. All students are provided with sports uniforms and equipment and engage in regular sports and nutritional education as part of their curriculum.

The Fariya project has now also become a resource “model school” for the region with teachers sharing teaching methods and pedagogy with neighbouring government schools. This leverages our impact on the local and wider community and promotes the importance of education.

Located in southern Tamil Nadu, nestled near the tsunami-prone shores of the Bay of Bengal, Yatra Foundation provides Teacher salary and Teacher training to enable local children to attend this state-of-the-art facility in conjunction with Isha Vidhya foundation. 1000 students benefit from excellent classrooms and computer facilities and learn in a full English-medium curriculum. Yatra foundation provides teacher salary subsidies to recruit and retain the best available teachers. We also provide training to local rural teachers to enhance their classroom skills and again, leverage our effectiveness in reaching a larger number of needy children.

Recently, 150 local headmasters and  young teachers from 50 regional schools attended a workshop at the Yatra Cuddlelore School to learn about teaching methods, evaluation, and  resource allocation. We hope to continue these workshops on a regular  basis so that these teaching methods and processes can be disseminated  around southern Tamil Nadu. We are now seeing some extraordinary  academic results especially in science and computing. The children at  this school now have hope with a belief and confidence that they can  dream and accomplish great outcomes. Many of our supporters have visited  and marveled at the level of education being delivered in this remote  location. We are now hoping to add year 11 and 12 to this school. We  conduct regular medical and dental camps at this school also to ensure  our children are healthy in mind and body.

Yatra is committed to providing continued teacher training and  support programs for the student cohorts currently in Grades 2 and 4 at  Isha Vidhya. Such training will remain until the respective cohorts  complete education equivalent to Year 12 level. Yatra aims that through  this process teacher training will reach a standard of excellence so as  to establish Isha Vidhya as the model program for teacher education in  the region. Yatra anticipates thereafter that Isha Vidhya will become the  preeminent resource for Government Education in the region, allowing  the school to transition to alternate sources of funding and ultimately become self sufficient. Self-sufficiency will be determined by:

• 95% of parents paying a nominal school fee
• Government providing 50% of teachers salary
• Past students and their families funding 20% of the teacher salary

,and will be expected to come about in [2025]. Once the program reaches self-sufficiency, Yatra will withdraw financial support for Isha Vidhya, and look toward other opportunities.

In partnership with Seva Mandir, an exceptional NGO well established in Rajasthan, we have established 20 Shiksha Kendras (rural educational learning centres) each with an average of 30 students drawn from the corresponding local village with the teachers often sourced from the same village. These children receive a quality bridging education with the aim of integrating them into government schools when the requisite skills have been acquired to equip them for future long-term success. 

The beneficiaries are the residents of villages, who are young children, aged 6-14 years who reside in remote areas not serviced by government schools, and the teachers who are drawn also from the villages and given teacher training. The majority of this population live on less than $2 per day and over 90% rely on subsistence agriculture, where conditions are arid, the land degraded, and water is scarce. Public services are dysfunctional and there is a high level of malnutrition, and the majority of children do not attend school. Yatra Foundation has supported the primary education of more than 3000 children over the last six years through Seva Mandir facilitated Shiksha Kendra (SKs) in the rural and tribal hamlets of GirwaBlock, Udaipur.

Yatra aims to oversee the transition of all School Capital funding from the Yatra Foundation to full community ownership. It is expected  that in so doing, local governments will begin to implement Yatra Foundation protocols to optimize school readiness preparation to cope with increased enrollment in government schools. Yatra will begin the transition of School maintenance responsibilities to be taken up in partnership with the local community and government. The completion of  such a transition will be expected in 2030.