Introduction
As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “The soul of India lives in the villages.” This statement highlights the crucial role of villages in the nation’s progress. Still, a major proportion of our country’s population resides in the villages. Despite this, our villages lack access to quality education, health services, livelihood opportunities with significant environmental degradation and widespread discrimination among different sections. Surrounded by these challenges, for our vision of Viksit Bharat to be realized, it is high time that our nation’s development policies and programmes should be village-centric, blending modernisation with cultural values that focus on building resilient and model villages for holistic development of all.
Surya Foundation through its initiative of Adarsh Gaon Yojana is working in more than 350 villages across 17 Indian States, to remove the challenges that are restricting the rural growth even after 78 years of Independence. Adarsh gaon Yojana is a community driven and volunteer led initiative that is working to improve the living standards of the rural community through the initiatives that aims to provide quality education to rural kids, tapping the potential of young blood and channelising their energy in the right direction, upgrade the health status of the inhabitants, sensitise the community about conservation of natural endowments and providing them opportunities of sustainable livelihoods to stabilise the income. Along with this, the initiative is also focusing to bridge rich rural heritage with the aspirations of modern development as well as promoting social harmony through several initiatives that end the disparity between various social groups living in the village.
Envisaged in 1998, Adarsh Gaon Yojana initiative has been able to significantly improve the quality of lives of millions of rural inhabitants including children, women, elders and other vulnerable sections of society.
Our Approach
With rapid urbanization and the government's focus on developing cities and towns, India's rich rural heritage is gradually fading. This shift is prompting rural communities to migrate to urban areas, leaving villages empty and struggling. Recognizing this challenge, the Surya Foundation is dedicated to transforming villages into self-sustaining, independent communities through a holistic development approach. By addressing the needs of different age groups, genders, and social sections, we empower rural populations to become self-reliant.
Our program is based on five pillars of development namely Education, Health, Environment, Harmony and Livelihoods. These pillars or domains remain the core focus of our work, as we work in each of our villages for empowering vulnerable populations like children, women, elderly, smallholders as well as preserving our rural cultural heritage and social cohesion.
In rural areas, the small kids of rural areas are deprived of better education facilities and due to lack of interest in reading and quality education facilities, the school dropout ratio is much higher, which is a matter of great concern. Hence, our Surya Sanskar Kendra (creative learning centres) target the small children and try to develop their interest in reading through our daily fun-filled classes in the villages. We also provide them access to reading materials and help them visualize the academic concepts through computer lessons. Apart from the academic lessons, we also focus on inculcating good habits among them in their formative age which becomes a foundation for their overall lifestyle and personality. Moreover, the selected children who excelled in different fields in different activities are sent for Rural Personality Development Camp where they are exposed to new surroundings and people. This helps the children in improving their adaptive capacities and leading to enhancement in various aspects of personality like speaking, communication, leadership, critical thinking and decision making.
For youth development, we focus on developing energetic and dynamic youths who are going to be the future of our country. Through our Surya Youth Clubs, we focus on tapping their potential and channelising their energy in sports like volley ball, kabaddi, along with yoga and meditation, for their holistic development and engage them in the activities of village development. At the end of the year, an Annual Rural Sports event, provides the young blood a platform to showcase their sports talents.
Access to quality healthcare services is still a distant dream for rural communities. Surya Foundation conducts regular health check up camps, blood donation camps, and veterinary camps for livestock in its villages, to bring preventive and curative healthcare at their doorsteps.
Surya Foundation with its initiative of Self Help Group focuses on providing the platform to women to showcase their talents as well as help in gaining new skills and talents that could help them run small business from their homes, for their socio-economic development. Through various training in tailoring, food processing, handicrafts, embroidery, cow-waste products, women become experts in respective skills, and start earning to become financially independent.
Adarsh Gaon Yojana is also trying to help farmers to bring sustainable innovations to the conventional farming method which will help in conservation of natural resources as well as saving time, efforts and maximising the yield and produce. Training camps like Dairy Training Camp, Multi Layer Farming Camps, Organic/Natural Farming Camps, along with exposure visits to Progressive Farmer’s farms, help the farmers to get introduction of sustainable innovations through hands-on training. Several seminars and discussion forums are also held to resolve the farmers queries in this regard.
Earlier, villages used to have rich environmental resources because of the adequate man-environment relationship which is now getting altered due to various ill practices adopted by human beings like overuse of plastic products, depleting water resources and clearing forests for agriculture or building infrastructure. Thus, environment conservation programmes along with the community helps them to educate the community about the ill-effects of disturbance of this relationship. The initiatives include Eco-Bricks program, Tree Plantation Campaign, Water Conservation programme. These initiatives allow the community to collectively contribute towards environment conservation.
Adarsh Gaon Yojana involves the several sections of the community in different community development programmes that aim to end the disparity among the different sections of the community. This includes the Gram Gaurav Mela which is a 10 day long fair organised in villages of the country to promote fraternity and harmony through fun filled different activities tailored for specific age groups. Also, the awareness regarding government schemes helps the community to be more informed and helps them to improve their socio-economic profile.
Our Training Programmes
Our founder, Shri Jai Prakash Agarwal ji firmly believes in the importance of continuous and rigorous training for improvement of our programs, interaction with experts, building community connection, exchange of thoughts, regular feedback, not only for all our karyakartas including full-time, volunteers, field workers, office/support staff, but for all community participants including children, women of our SHG groups, and community leaders. These trainings initiated almost 3 decades ago, have remained as the flagship initiative of Surya Foundation, helping millions of youths, children, women, realize their potential to develop into productive and socially-conscious citizens. Surya Foundation conducts most of its 3-20 days trainings centrally at its training campus, Surya Sadhna Sthali, which is a 10 acres sprawling Residential Facility with capacity of around 100 campers, in Jhinjholi village in Sonipat district at the Delhi-Haryana border. In addition to the central residential training at Jhinjholi, Surya Foundation conducts many trainings locally for its team and community members as per the requirement, in their respective villages.
1. Teachers Personality Development Camp (TPDC) - Our teachers are the backbone of our initiative that bridges the Foundation with the beneficiaries. Surya Foundation conducts yearly training for the 80-100 newly joined volunteer teachers (both men and women) across the country, in 10-20 days camps held centrally in the Jhinjholi campus. The rigorous training involves their orientation in Surya Foundation’s culture, patriotism, yoga, moral/cultural/ ethical education, reviewing their performance, experience sharing sessions, and expert sessions on improving the quality of work to impact the community positively.
2. Grameen Personality Development Camp (GPDC) - Surya Foundation conducts 10 days Grameen PDC every year for the 20-40 rural kids from Class III-VIII, including our Sanskar Kendra kids, locally in each of its 230+ operating villages with Sanskar Kendras. These summer camps conducted annually from March - May, help children to unleash their creative potential in arts, crafts, music, dance, as well as nurtures their curiosity through activities like science experiments, pottery, plastic waste management etc.
3. Rural Personality Development Camp (RPDC) - Each year, foundation’s local teams in villages select best 100-150 boys and girls of class V-VIII in their villages, who have shown potential, initiative and willingness to learn, for a 10-15 days of exclusive Rural Personality Development Camp (RPDC), held at its Jhinjholi campus. These children are exposed to more advanced training and activities like sessions on environment conservation, healthy living, patriotism, yoga, discipline, conduct extempore and debates, best out of waste, science experiments, along with outdoor and indoor sports that help them build their personalities with a focus on holistic development.
4. Sewa Bhavi Camp (Community Leaders) - Our foundation's various initiatives are steered through the community with the support of our dedicated Seva Bhavi (community leaders) acting voluntarily. For building a community of these inspiring leaders for free exchange of thoughts and ideas, we annually conduct a 5 days residential training camp for 50-70 of our aspiring community leaders, coming across the country, who come to learn on latest schemes, rural innovations, inspire others, and be inspired from the remarkable work done by fellow community leaders.
5. Annual Women’s Self-Help Group Training Camp - Surya Foundation conducts a 3-5 days residential camp for its 70-100 SHG community women members, who come from all across the country, to converge at Jhinjholi campus. These SHG members are selected based on their existing initiatives towards self-empowerment through entrepreneurship, or interest in starting new ventures. They undergo rigorous but fun-filled training sessions to help grow their overall personality through engaging yoga, meditation, naturopathy sessions, and sports. They also undergo expert training in marketing, product development, interaction with successful women entrepreneurs, including food-processing training cum exposure visit at National Institute of Food Technology and Entrepreneurship and Management (NIFTEM), Karnal.
