An education led by Adivasis, rooted in who we are

All four communities VBVT works with (Bettakurumba, Kattunayakan, Mullakurumba and Paniya) are recognised by the Government of India as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs), living along the forest fringes of the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve and Mudumalai Tiger Reserve.

Through the 1980s, forest regulations disrupted Adivasi life and cultural practices. Access that communities had relied on for generations was curtailed almost overnight. Schools had little space for Adivasi languages, culture, or ways of learning. As first-generation learners, many Adivasi children struggled to even enter and stay in school, and many community members felt isolated from the mainstream, unwilling to participate.

Schools make our children feel small; they sit quietly, afraid to speak. They start believing they are inferior.

In 1988, Adivasi communities across Gudalur came together to form the Adivasi Munnetra Sangam (AMS), a federation giving the four communities a collective voice. It was from this foundation that, seven years later, the demand for an Adivasi-owned school took shape.

In 1995, a mahasabha of 200 Adivasi leaders called for a culturally appropriate and nurturing learning system. In response, VBVT set up a school with a mission to recognise and value Adivasi culture and languages. Over the years, the community faced a multitude of issues around their children’s education, from low enrolment to the lack of inclusive learning spaces.

A 1999 survey found just 25% of school-age Adivasi children enrolled in school, and literacy at 27%, just 17% among women.

VBVT has tried to address these with interventions ranging from the Vidyodaya Adivasi School to village-based learning initiatives, including camps, study centres and early childhood education centres. Members of the community play an integral role in the decision-making and implementation across all these programmes.

This is because it is the community that faces the problem, and so the community must also be actively involved in formulating the solution. The decisions that shape VBVT’s work come from the ground, with the organisation providing the necessary support. Only what the community itself sees and accepts as a solution is taken up, not what an outside perspective dictates.

That belief reshaped everything. Adivasi teachers came to lead the classrooms, training began soon after to prepare more of them, elders and parents were welcomed in to teach and to watch, and over the years the trust’s own board grew to be made up primarily of Adivasi representatives. The people the school serves became the people who run it.

Three decades on, the work is about an education that strengthens a child’s roots in their language, culture and the forest, rather than pulling them away.