About Us
What is Bhavya ?
Bhavya is an organization set up by The Bhavya Trust, an Educational, Social and Charitable Trust, with the specific purpose of facilitating a meaningful, freeing education which brings out the best in every individual involved.
Bhavya is, simply, a way of life. It is an extension of the home where both the children and their parents have the opportunity to be spontaneous, and free of fear and anxiety. Bhavya is not a school. It is a community of people. We believe that Life is an education and that learning is an essential outcome of living and growing. We, therefore, work towards providing children with an open environment where living, growing and learning are nurtured in a natural and peaceful manner.
We have made a conscious decision to work towards bringing about the much-needed change which will help us evolve into a mature, just, and humane society - one which reveres the way of peace. Only in an environment of acceptance and peace can meaningful education happen. We believe that for a person to genuinely live a life of peace, he must first know peace.
We have created such an environment by choosing to free our children of the restrictions imposed by classrooms, timetables, competitions, examinations, grades, and a fixed curriculum/structure. This freedom enables each child to learn and grow at his own pace and, in the course of time, identify and develop his interests as well as his inherent talents, thus creating independent, self-directed learners for life.
In our work with children over the past two decades we have felt a great need to simplify the process of education and redefine it. We believe that our responsibility towards our children and all generations that follow, is not just to provide them with an education which ensures a safe and lucrative career for life. We have, instead, a much greater responsibility towards them. We need to enable them to become active participants with us in the process of reviving our planet. The knowledge and the abilities they gain, while doing so, are the only legacy which we can leave them, in order to ensure that they will have a thriving planet on which they can use their own ingenuity to create a better world for all. In fact, this is the education we believe that we must provide for our children where Nature becomes our greatest teacher.
Founding Principles
In Bhavya we believe that children, though limited in their range of experiences, are as important, and therefore, as deserving of respect as adults. The individual child’s dignity is preserved in all his interactions with the adults around him. When children feel respected and accepted, they grow into self-confident people who are able to respect others, quite naturally.
We recognize the importance of freedom in enabling people to realise their potential. In Bhavya, children have the freedom and opportunity to make decisions about their activities, their interactions, and the use of their time. Our experience shows that freedom helps children to take initiative and responsibility – to take charge of their lives. In the process, they stretch themselves with challenges and make new discoveries about their own capabilities and about life in general. Gradually, they are able to recognize their true potential.
We respond to children with empathy. Thoughts and feelings that children express are taken seriously, and accepted without judgment. We have found that empathy helps children to develop self-respect and compassion. It helps them to stay in touch with themselves, and thus enables them to be sensitive to others’ feelings and needs.
We believe that emotional settlement in children is, primarily, linked to the environment available to them at home. We spend a considerable amount of time in helping parents to become more aware of, and empathic towards their own thoughts and feelings, and in the process, become more empathic towards their children. This enables the parents to accept their children unconditionally, and to give them the freedom which will make it possible for the children to realise their potential. As we move together as one team, children encounter nurturing experiences with little conflict between their two major environments – home and Bhavya.
We have made a conscious decision to move away from arbitrarily determined syllabuses and overloaded textbooks. Learning in Bhavya is rooted largely in the reality of children’s individual experiences, and hence, is meaningful to them. This enables them to apply in their lives, whatever they have learned.