The idea of Nalanda was conceived by social thinkers, management professionals and education experts, who felt that a separate institution needs to be set up to cater to the aspect of quality primary education.  Nalanda was set up in 1996.

Nalanda defines its mission to work towards providing access to quality basic education for children from underprivileged sections of society, through community mobilisation, capacity building, advocacy, support services, training and innovation.

In last two decades, Nalanda has worked as a resource centre to provide technical and academic support to various government and non-government agencies working on primary education. This includes but is not limited to:

• Prominent donor bodies such as Tata Trust, UNICEF, ActionAid, World Vision, ChildFund India, Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, Aga Khan Foundation etc.
• It also includes support to Bihar and UP government programs such as SSA and SCERT in Uttar Pradesh and also in strengthening of resources such as libraries or bodies such as DIET.
• Besides this, Nalanda has worked with corporate for providing technical support to Tata Power, Janalakshmi Financial Services and Dalmia Sugar Mills social initiatives.
• It has also been providing technical support to prominent NGOs and resource centres in various states of the country.

Its current outreach is in 3 states, 8 districts, 40 blocks, 377 Villages, 100 Government Schools and 165000 Children approximately.

Why us?

Nalanda is a resource centre that has a huge outreach among government, NGOs and ground roots. Over the years it has become a rich store well of resources ranging from research studies, training modules, multi lingual books, TLMs etc.

Thus it has huge potential of the following types:

• To increase the CSR outreach substantially through its network partners.
• To be able to capacitate the core CSR partners in aspects of quality education so that they may translate this into good field practices or for planning suitable initiatives.

 To reach out with the best of quality education interventions to stakeholders that the CSR finds suitable.

Special Features of the Organization

Here are some of the special features:

• Made substantial foray into strengthening RTE in innovative ways such as through creation and strengthening of local learning hubs that ensure age and class specific learning for children in peripheral schools improving quality of education in schools.
• Has immense outreach among the community and is able to mobilise community to be strong stakeholders in its intervention.
• Is one of the few organizations that have successfully integrated technology to education in the most marginalised, remote and rural settings.
• One of the innovative interventions pioneered by Nalanda, which may be adopted by the government, is to strengthen the primary education in Madarsa system of education.
• Has been able to even integrate and generate goodwill among government schools and systems without any formal MOU based intervention to the extent that these schools now look forward to Nalanda’s training and programs.
• It has also reached out towards the education of the girl child in a veritable way.
• Have been able to make a difference in the quality of teaching learning practices in systems as difficult to access, as Madarsas, education of tribal children etc. and by developing resources in tribal languages such as Mundari, Kurukh and Ho and also in Urdu.
• As a resource centre for education innovation, Nalanda has endeavoured towards developing adaptable teaching-learning materials which would translated the innovative child centered methodologies into concrete pedagogic practices. 
• Nalanda has developed various types of training models for teachers which have been adopted by the government. 

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