In a career spanning seven years, Priya Nadkarni has worn many hats.
After finishing her BA, she worked as an enterprise journalist for a year. Her hobby in finance and advertising led her to pursue an MBA diploma from ISB, following which she became an investment banking analyst with Unitus Capital in Bengaluru. Field visits were an essential part of her paintings with Unitus, and as she came across diverse social issues, she realized that she wanted to work closer to addressing them.
So, in 2012, she determined to end banking and joined Pradhan (Professional Assistance for Development Action). This enterprise cooperates with the authorities to introduce diverse programs to teach girls and children in Madhya Pradesh. For years, she worked to design programs for the employability of tribal teens in Mandla. Even though Prada changed into helping the youngsters with comfy, properly-paying activities in towns, Priya noticed that most of those children had returned to their villages after some months. The schooling was efficient for individuals who desired to live in the towns, but for the rest, it wasn’t very sustainable,” she tells The Better India.
“It was like setting a band-resource on a deep wound, and employability schooling, I determined, turned into inadequate. Digvijay (Singh), who turned into my colleague at Pradan at the time, also reflected my thoughts, and so, we concept of starting an undertaking of our personnel. We wanted to address the more fundamental issues via this assignment. Digvijay, who has an MBA in Rural Development from XIM, Bhubaneswar, started his career in agriculture, women empowerment, and children employability. He joined Pradan to assist in uplifting tribal groups in some of the most faraway areas of Central India.
In 2014, Digvijay and Priya gave up their jobs, visited colleges like Vikas in Bangalore, and performed summer camps in Mandla before finally deciding on starting the Riverside Natural School. One of the most backward districts in India, Mandla has a 68 in line with the cent literacy rate. A part of the dense Kanha National Park, the district has seen a few Naxal changes over the past few years. However, we do not have paintings in the district’s Naxal-affected part. It’s been extraordinarily safe for us, and we had been welcomed in humans’ houses within the ultimate ten years,” says Priya. Although most of the tribal populace of the district believes in the electricity of education, their belief stays unrealized thanks to the less-than-sufficient number one and secondary schooling centers.
