Background
Education in southern Gujarat (Saurashtra) traditionally had been non-existent and any child who showed some promise in schooling had to go to major cities like Rajkot, Jamnagar, Ahmedabad etc. to do further education from standard 10 onwards. The Government up till 2000 had done very little towards Education outside the major cities due to their own shortcomings. Result of this neglect has made most of southern Gujarat dependent only on smallholder farming who barely manages to survive from one year to another constantly being hindered by natural disasters like droughts, floods, cyclones etc. Hence, there are virtually no industries or reasonable size businesses to give employment to the youth. Youth have no incentive to study and most were coming out of the educational system without being able to read or write properly.
Bhagvatinandji Education Trust (BET) decided in 2000 to correct this by building a residential school for 100 boys on an existing farmland that it owned which was on the main road between Junagadh and Visavadar. The school buildings were donated by a UK donor and were near completion in January 2001 when the Gujarat Earthquake happened on 26th January 2001 with the epic center in Kutchh. Pujya Muktanandji (Bapu) led a volunteer team to help in Kutchh with the relief work stationed in a town called Adhoi, where they spent 3 months. Consequent to the earthquake, there were hundreds of children who were orphaned. It was then decided to bring 100 of these orphans to be educated and looked after in the newly built buildings.
Soon, there was a need for more rooms – residential and classrooms for educating local children. Donors were sought and new residential buildings and a new school building were built. In a few years’ time, there were about 1800 children studying in the campus.
A school for specially abled children was built in 2008 and is helping to educate and develop life skills for these boys and girls so they can live their lives meaningfully and independently.
With the building of Jay Ambe hospital in 2012, there was a need to start an English medium school to attract professional doctors and nurses to work in the hospital by giving this facility for their children.
