Digantar’s search for alternatives in education began on a very small scale with a small school in 1978. The teachers of this school had trained under the late Shri David Horsburgh, who also guided the school in its initial years.

The first ten years of that small school were a good grounding in understanding elementary education in general and classroom practices in particular. Digantar felt that it is the rural children who continued to be deprived of good education. We therefore began to focus on rural children. Digantar was formally registered as a non profit society in 1987. We began work in the villages on the outskirts of Jaipur. Currently, Digantar’s rural education programme runs in three villages and over 600 children study in these three schools. We also run a programme for out-of-school adolescent girls called Pehchan in Phagi block of Jaipur. The Pehchan programme also works towards improving the quality of education and school environment in government schools.

We have also worked with several government programmes as a resource support agency. Some of these are Alternative Schools Programme of Rajiv Gandhi Prathmic Shiksha Mission, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh; Janashala Programme, Ministry of Human Resource Development, New Delhi; District Primary Education Programme, Ministry of Human Resource Development, New Delhi, SCERT, Chattisgarh; Lok Jumbish Sahaj Shiksha Karyakram.