Over the past nine years, Vidya Vanam, an alternative school providing education to K-IX students of impoverished backward communities living on the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border, has miraculously transformed the lives and destiny of tribals and their children: Hemalatha Raghupathi Prior to 2007, the Irula tribe and other impoverished backward communities living in 25 villages surrounding the town of Anaikatti (elephant corridor; pop. 2,438), 32 km from Coimbatore on the Tamil Nadu-Kerala border, were eking out precarious livelihoods working as casual labour in coffee plantations and brick kilns. They could at best dream of giving their children a decent education. Then the Bhuvana Foundation stepped in nine years ago. A registered education NGO (estb. January 2007), it has miraculously transformed the lives and destiny of the tribals and their children through several education and community development initiatives. Jointly founded by Anaikatti-based educationist Prema Rangachary, her US-based neurologist brother Dr. S. Sriram and Padma Shree awardee Shanthi Ranganathan, the mission of the Bhuvana Foundation is to provide education, health and self-employment opportunities to economically uplift the tribals and backward classes in remote villages surrounding Anaikatti. The spearhead project of the Bhuvana Foundation is the Vidya Vanam School (‘education in the forest’) in Anaikatti, started in June 2007 by Prema Rangachary. Currently, the school provides English-medium, alternative education to 300 K-IX students whose parents are illiterate daily wage labourers of the Irula tribe, adi dravidar and OBC (other backward classes) communities. Vidya Vanam provides free-of-charge education to tribal students, but as a token of the community’s pledge to support the school, non-tribal students pay a fee of Rs.300-500 per month which covers tuition and school bus charges. The school also dispenses free books, stationery, uniforms and three nutritious meals and snacks to all students everyday at a total cost of Rs.25,000 per student per year, and is entirely supported by voluntary contributions from friends and family of Rangachary and donations from individuals and corporates. Vidya Vanam is accredited by the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) till class VIII, and Rangachary is striving for state government recognition of the class X certification issued by the school. For the higher secondary school which is on the drawing board, Vidya Vanam is affiliated with Edexcel, UK and plans to offer its International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) programme. Promoters & Drivers The driving force behind the school is 73-year-old Rangachary. An English literature postgrad of Madras University, Rangachary began her career in the Ethiraj College for Women, Chennai in 1965, where she taught for three years before marriage and family commitments compelled her to take a long break. She picked up the threads of her career again in 1985 and promoted Akshara Vidya Peetam, a primary school and Kala Peetam, a school of fine arts, in 1987 in Chennai, which she ran successfully for 15 years before winding up both in 2000 for “compelling personal reasons”. Rangachary’s introduction to Anaikatti and establishment of Vidya Vanam School was unplanned and fortuitous. “At a friend’s request I…
