About Us

The south-eastern region of Gujarat is predominantly inhabited by Adivasi (Tribal) communities and has some of the poorest educational indicators. Access to secondary and higher secondary school education is a challenge for many children in the area. This severely limits their access to opportunities for higher education and livelihoods and also limits their participation as citizens.

In 2001, Phulsingbhai and Sitarambhai reached out to BAIF, to help them start a high school in Chondha so that children, especially girls, from their village would not drop out after primary school. The nearest high schools in Pipalkhed and Khanpur were more than 10 kilometres away. BAIF was already supporting the community development efforts in Chondha through a community-run trust, Navchetan Manav Vikas Mandir. With joint efforts of BAIF and the community, the school affiliated to the Gujarat Secondary Education Board was started in Phulsingbhai’s home with 32 students while a school building was being constructed. In 2003, Dr Abdul Kalam visited our school. In the same year, a hostel for 25 girls was started to ensure girls from remote villages could also access the school. The higher secondary grades offering the Arts stream were added in 2011 and the Science stream was later added in 2017. In the same year, a state-of-the-art ‘science building’ with digital classrooms and well-equipped science labs, a computer centre and a library was built. This was followed by constructing a 120 capacity girl’s hostel in 2021 with the support of Larsen and Toubro Public Charitable Trust. Today (2022-23), the school has an enrolment of 270 students of which 164 stay in hostels. Navchetan Manav Vikas Mandir now exclusively focuses on managing the school and hostels. 

BAIF continues to provide ethical and financial oversight for the trust.