How Education Transformed the Belwa Ranaji Community

Belwa Ranaji, a cluster of 24 villages with roughly 2,500 residents, derives its name from the honorific address for the Rajput community that has lived in the region for several centuries now. For the longest time, the community’s primary source of income was agriculture, which eventually took the form of agribusiness. Some residents of Belwa Ranaji have also offered their services to India’s defence.

Despite working hard for centuries, the community continued to suffer at the hands of illiteracy. It has faced several other challenges, such as unemployment and lack of facilities such as transportation and healthcare, over the years, but nothing hurt the well-being of this community as much as the lack of education did. But things have started to turn around ever since the Bharti Foundation, together with the eager efforts of Mr Gordhan Singh, the village’s former headman, set up the Satya Bharti School in 2007.

The establishment of the school in the village has resulted in lots of positive change in the lives of its residents, including children, as well as the overall well-being of the entire community. There was a time when the people of Belwa Ranaji lived without basic necessities, had an extremely conservative outlook in life, held on to age-old misbeliefs, and neglected their little girls.

But today, it is a completely different story. In fact, it is a proud story of how far the Belwa Ranaji community has come. The spread of education has not only helped them lead better lives, but also helped them to learn to let go of the old ways that kept them from making progress. And not only that, the entire community has grown so much over the past decade that they are now able to easily keep up with the progress that the world outside their community is making.