Stories from inside the experiment
These are not success stories.
They are life stories —
messy,
unfinished,
and real.
Here you’ll find moments of learning,
earning,
struggle,
and dignity
as they unfold in everyday life.
Founders & the Beginning
Before programs, before plans —
there were questions, discomfort, and a refusal to accept “this is how it is.”
This is where the experiment began.
Read →
Alice, Co-Founder SAANS Foundation
She didn’t come to the community. She chose not to leave it.
Alice’s work begins from memory, not observation. She grew up inside Chudaman Talim, poverty, domestic violence, and childhoods cut short. Her understanding of education is bodily, emotional, remembered — a quiet authority.
Her question is not how children learn, but why some get to dream while others only survive. Safety, affirmation, identity, imagination — these are prerequisites, not luxuries.
She does not call herself a founder. She is someone holding stories, building space, nurturing change, one relationship at a time.
Meet Alice →
Satyasheel, Co-Founder SAANS Foundation
He doesn’t lead with ideas—he leads with what he has seen.
He has walked through classrooms, villages, bastis, and movements across Maharashtra. He has seen education uplift dignity, and he has seen it quietly steal childhood. He does not blame children, parents, or teachers. He names the systems: transactional schools, privatisation, language shifts, curricula divorced from life.
What drives him is agency: children and communities owning their learning, connecting knowledge to life, labour, and culture. He believes education works when it grows from people’s lives, not when imposed from above. He builds spaces where hope, unity, and self-reliance can take root.
Meet Satyasheel →
Children & Youth from Learning Spaces
Learning as it happens —
in curiosity, resistance, joy, and silence.
Storytelling as Impact Fuel
How language, confidence, and learning take root
Storytelling is how learning begins.
Before textbooks. Before rules. Before classrooms.
Through stories, children learn to listen deeply, speak with courage, imagine freely, and make meaning together. Language is not taught. It is lived. Stories build vocabulary, empathy, memory, and agency at once.
At SAANS, storytelling turns learning into participation.
Not instruction, but connection.
Read the Story →
Learning to Learn
How children discover their own ways of understanding the world
What if learning wasn’t about finishing the syllabus—but about knowing how you learn?
Through experience, reflection, and dialogue, learners explored different ways of learning—listening, reading, watching, doing, and learning with peers. A simple paper plane became a living classroom, revealing that there is no single method, only conscious choice.
Rooted in Dewey and experiential learning, this session shifted learners from receivers to authors of learning.
Explore the Pedagogy →
Learning, Said Aloud
How Fridays turn reflection into collective strength
What changes when learning is shared, not judged?
Every Friday, learners open their spiral sheets and speak their week into the circle—goals set, efforts made, doubts faced, adjustments tried. Peers listen, appreciate, question. Learning moves from private struggle to shared understanding.
At Living Academy, reflection is not the end.
It is how learning continues.
Step Into the Circle →
Step deeper into learning moments →
Projects & Street Experiments
Ideas tested on real streets,
with real risks and real feedback.
Street Smart Entrepreneurship
Where learning begins on the street, not in the classroom
This program did not launch with lectures. It began with the street.
Nineteen young people stepped into a 12 week journey where entrepreneurship is learned by observing problems, testing ideas, and facing real customers with real money at stake. With seed funds, weekly sprints, and constant reflection, earning becomes dignity and failure becomes feedback.
This is not training.
This is learning through lived economic action.
Enter the Journey →
The Street Became the Classroom
This did not begin with a lesson. It began on the street.
When Mandi Sir, who teaches at IIM Mumbai, worked with our children, science moved into real life. Selling science toys meant speaking to strangers, handling money, and explaining ideas. Learning turned into confidence, courage, and dignity.
Enter the story →
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Life Skills in Real Life
Not taught.
Lived, stumbled upon, practiced again.
Cooking as Life, Life in Cooking
Each chop, stir and taste teaches patience, focus and care.
As they explore flavors and tell stories behind their dishes, they practice confidence, empathy and pride in their work. Cooking becomes a space to listen, speak, experiment and celebrate, a daily practice where learning meets living.
Here the kitchen is alive and every meal is a lesson in life, community and self.
Aaj Ki Adalat
Aaj Ki Adalat is a space where children bring real issues, concerns, and disagreements to be heard. They speak openly, listen to each other, and explore solutions together.
Through these discussions, they gain confidence, understand collective problem-solving, and experience that their voices truly matter in shaping everyday decisions and community life.
Fixing More Than a Roof
When the roof started dripping, our children didn’t pause or wait. They ran to gather tools and materials and took charge of the task.
Over three days, they worked together to waterproof the roof, managing every step with care, problem-solving, and teamwork. They learned to plan, cooperate, and trust their own skills. What was built was more than a dry, safe roof; it was confidence, responsibility, and pride in their own hands.
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Xplore Journey
Learning often deepens when we step outside familiar lanes.
New places. New people. New questions.
Bhavarth Library | Karve Nagar, Kothrud.
A bus ride became a classroom.
A library became freedom.
Curiosity led. Confidence followed.
Children stepped beyond routine into shared public spaces—navigating the city, holding responsibility, discovering stories and self-belief.
Enter the journey →
Monsoon Camp | Adiwasi Sahaj Shiksha Pariwar, Maswan,Palghar.
This was not a retreat. It was a rupture.
For three days, they stayed with tribals, saw learning built without privilege, touched geography instead of consuming it, and witnessed what it costs to study when nothing is guaranteed.
Here, they met communities that do not wait for systems to arrive. Education revealed itself not as curriculum, but as courage, care, and collective survival.
This journey did not inspire. It altered.
Step inside →
Know Your Army Mela
When the world gets larger, learning gets real
On a January morning, children stepped out of the basti and into the roar of tanks.
At the Know Your Army Mela, learners encountered soldiers, machinery, discipline, and service up close. They asked questions, touched equipment, watched marches, and listened to stories of courage and teamwork. What textbooks call “nation” became visible, human, and alive.
This was not a picnic.
This was civic learning in motion.
Learning happened on buses, in crowds, beside tanks, and in the quiet awe that followed.
Xplore →
Xplore the World with Us →
Youth & (L)Earning Journeys
When learning meets responsibility,
dignity enters the room.
Street Smart Entrepreneurship
Where learning begins on the street, not in the classroom
This program did not launch with lectures. It began with the street.
Nineteen young people stepped into a 12 week journey where entrepreneurship is learned by observing problems, testing ideas, and facing real customers with real money at stake. With seed funds, weekly sprints, and constant reflection, earning becomes dignity and failure becomes feedback.
This is not training.
This is learning through lived economic action.
Enter the Journey →
Our Creations, Our Voice
At the prestigious National Institute of Naturopathy, Pune, our learners showcased their ideas with a vibrant stall. Handmade eco-friendly soy candles, healthy cakes and cookies, and upcycled cloth bags reflected their creativity, care, and skill.
By making, presenting, and sharing, they practiced teamwork, responsibility, and pride, discovering that their hands and ideas can make an impact beyond the classroom.
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Rahee & Rehnuma (Educators & Facilitators from community)
Learners who stayed,
and slowly began holding space for others.
Facilitators at the Minority Education Conference
This was not a seminar. It was alignment.
SAANS facilitators entered a national space where minority education was spoken of without apology—through lived realities, shared struggle, and collective resolve. Conversations moved beyond diagnosis into action. Differences were named. Solidarity was built.
Across regions and contexts, educators sat together, argued carefully, ate together, and imagined education that does not ask learners to disappear in order to belong. Facilitators returned carrying questions sharper than answers—and strategies ready for experiment.
This journey widened the frame of SAANS’s work. It reminded us: inclusion is not charity. It is a system we must build, together.
Step into the collective →
Voices Unmuted. Power Unleashed.
At the 125th Anniversary of Sane Guruji, SAANS youth and women didn’t just speak—they claimed space. From Afreen’s legacy-rooted fire to Falak’s unbreakable resolve, these stories turned stages into battlegrounds for truth, dignity, and justice. This wasn’t nostalgia—it was resistance. A living testament that education is more than schooling; it’s survival, courage, and community rising up. Meet the voices shaping tomorrow—fierce, unfiltered, unstoppable. Listen. Share. Stand with them.→
Rooted. Relational. Unapologetically Human.
At Phoenix Project, Goregaon, SAANS facilitators witnessed education rising from within the community. Youth from bastis and tribal areas weren’t being “prepared” for life—they were already leading it. From Rajendra Bahalkar’s powerful session on stress and choice to SAANS seniors co-facilitating alongside seasoned educators, learning became shared ground. This space stands strong because of the quiet, unwavering commitment of Sudhir Desai Sir, whose trust and mentorship made this exchange possible. This wasn’t an exposure visit. It was alignment.
→ Read the story.
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Share Heroes
People who share not from surplus,
but from belief.
A Conversation with Anwar Rajan
This was not a guest lecture. It was an encounter.
Children sat face to face with lived history—with questions about religion, power, reform, and courage placed openly on the floor. Anwar Rajan spoke not from authority, but from experience: activism shaped by sacrifice, reform born from questioning, harmony built through insistence. He listened as much as he spoke.
For the children, activism stopped being distant or heroic. It became local. Possible. Personal. They saw how faith, politics, and everyday choices collide—and how change begins with asking difficult questions. This conversation did not inform. It unsettled, clarified, and planted resolve.
Step into the dialogue →
Drawing as Thinking
An artist interaction that shifted how learners see art
What happens when no one corrects your drawing—only asks why you keep returning to it?
In this session, artist Rohan Chandrachud didn’t teach technique. He listened. Learners reflected on their repeated sketches, discovered curiosity behind imitation, and began drawing from the mind’s eye. Art became observation, memory, and meaning—not copying.
At SAANS, drawing is not practice.
It is inquiry.
Enter the Session →
Where joy becomes the method
Twice a week, learning enters the basti through colour, clay, stories, and play.
Facilitated by ShareHeroes Ria and Ojas, these sessions treat joy as serious pedagogy. Children learn with their hands, voices, and emotions—crafting, painting, shaping clay, counting, reading pictures, and telling stories. There are no wrong answers here, only exploration.
This is not childcare.
This is how confidence, language, and thinking quietly take root.
Step Inside the CLC →
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