Maharashtra, India
Loksadhana
15 Flash Forward study lights delivered, adding an estimated 90 learning hours each day.
A charitable trust advancing rural education, women’s empowerment and health in Maharashtra.
15
study lights delivered
90
estimated study hours a day
56
villages reached
2,700+
school graduates
About Loksadhana
About Loksadhana
Loksadhana began in 1982 in Chikhalgaon, a village in Maharashtra’s Konkan region and the birthplace of Lokmanya Tilak. Tilak built schools across India, yet his own village lacked a secondary school, so Dr. Raja Dandekar, a Pune-trained Ayurvedic doctor, and Professor Renu Dandekar, a professor of literature, left the city for the village and made education their catalyst for change.
Today the trust works across 56 villages, and its goal is to bring its hands-on vocational education model to 5 million students from marginalized rural backgrounds by 2042. The school it opened in 1987 has grown into primary, secondary and higher secondary programs — a junior college added in 2015 lets rural youth continue without leaving home — and counts more than 2,700 graduates. Two hostels house roughly 200 resident students.
The approach is deliberately hands-on: students learn agriculture, engineering, energy and home science by doing, building tools and even setting up solar systems. A partner that already teaches practical skills, and that knows each of the communities it serves, is a natural fit for a solar study light.
Their work
Programs at Loksadhana
Photo: LoksadhanaSchools and junior college
What began as a one-room experimental school, where older children taught younger ones through puzzles and play, now runs primary through higher secondary programs. The 2015 junior college in Loknirman Bhavan offers Arts and Commerce streams with workshops, cultural activities and career guidance.
Photo: LoksadhanaSkilling, step by step
A ladder of hands-on programs: Life Skill Education for grades 5–7, a weekly Introduction to Basic Technology day where students build LED lamps, smokeless stoves and drones, then the one-year residential Diploma in Basic Rural Technology covering agriculture, engineering, energy and home science, and finally industry training and field work in the villages.
Photo: LoksadhanaPeople and prosperity
Beyond the classroom: a skills centre trains about 450 people a year, more than 140 alumni run their own businesses, and the trust’s work in women’s empowerment and rural health reaches families across all 56 villages.
The partnership
Our part
Flash Forward delivered 15 study lights to Loksadhana free of charge, adding an estimated 90 hours of study light every day. Loksadhana chooses which students receive each light: the partner knows the students and households across the 56 villages it serves. Student interns in Bellevue build the lights; the partner puts them to work.
Each light costs $5.17 in parts, recharges in about 7 hours of sunlight and runs for up to about 12 hours on a full charge. For a student without electricity at home, that is the difference between studying and stopping at sunset.
Loksadhana
Their work, in photos
