“Poverty is the key hurdle for education and the root cause of all social evils."
About Us
“Education is the most powerful tool for reforming the society”
Slums mainly dominate Majiwada village in Thane. The children living in these slums do not have access to primary education due to the extremely unfavorable socio-economic conditions.
Due to extreme poverty, the children in this area are burdened with the responsibility of their home and their younger siblings.
Having lived in this village himself, Mr. Sudhakar Bajaj with the vision of guiding these children onto a better path and toward a better tomorrow established the
“Kala Sugandha Mandal” . The main objective of the Mandal is to provide basic education to these children to live a good life and build a good society thereafter. Keeping this objective in mind, he started a primary school by the name of “Navajeevan Prathamik Vidyamandir” in 1995.
In the beginning, Mr. Bajaj conducted the school from his own house. However, as the number of children increased so did the number of classrooms required.
Post his retirement, Mr. Bajaj continued to work for the school all by himself despite and regardless of not receiving any financial support from any quarter. His dream came to be true and finally, Navajivan Prathamik Vidyamandir came into existence as a Government recognized school providing free education to children from standard I to VII.
The school was growing and the number of students was increasing. The number of teachers increased too. In addition to free education, the school also provided the children with free study materials, uniforms, and meals. The salaries of the teachers were also to be paid. Hence the financial burden was increasing and it was difficult to manage all these expenses.
At this point with the blessings of Shri Sai Baba Mr. Jitendra Bajaj, son of Mr.Sudhakar Bajaj took the responsibility in his hands. He tried to involve as many people in the society towards the welfare of the school.
“Poverty is the key hurdle for education and the root cause of all social evils”
Due to extreme poverty, the children living in the slums of Majiwada village of Thane struggle round the clock to earn bread and butter not just for themselves but also for their families.
Their parents leave for work early in the morning and are in most cases unable to return before nightfall. As a result, these children (no more than 7 years of age themselves) are burdened with the responsibility of their home and younger siblings.
Left unattended by their parents, they tend to fall into bad company and acquire bad habits like begging, rag picking, stealing, etc. as a result. Exposed to such severe levels of poverty, acquiring money by hook or crook, by straight or unlawful means, is many times the only way out visible to them. And such thinking is only encouraged by the environment
Hence, Mr. Bajaj believed in the idea that “if the child cannot reach the school, then the school should reach the child”. The teachers of Navajeevan go to their hutments and generate interest in them for the school by showing them the availability of games and food in the school.
The students coming to Navajeevan Prathamik Vidyamandir are the children from the slums where they are improperly treated and even abused but at Navjeevan Prathmik Vidyamandir they are not discriminated based on Caste or Money rather they all are equally loved and cared.