1996

Our mission is to provide an warm and welcoming environment for all life to flourish with the Divine's grace.

Due to considerable changes in India's social environment, the fields of
child development, education and old-age care have become very important social issues.
Children's Home:
The Aum Pranava Ashram Children's Home shelters orphans and children from economically very poor background. They are provided with all the necessities of life and grow up under the loving care of the founders and other care-takers, who help the children to look after their daily routine and help them with their studies.
In this context, we have envisaged to set up a new school for the ashram children as well as for children from the surrounding villages.
In Public Schools, the class rooms are frequently overcrowded with sometimes up to 80 (or even 90!!) children sitting in one single class room! Unfinished lessons have to be completed at home which leads to waste of time and weariness. For these (and other) reasons, an ashram school would be ideal.

At present, the ashram accommodates over 60 children (boys & girls) in separate boys' and girls' hostels. We have always made utmost efforts to give the children the sense of a real home, keeping the atmosphere family-oriented and natural.

In the ashram children are provided with the following services and facilities free of cost:
Food
Accommodation
Clothing
Education
Medical care (mainly homeopathic remedies or Ayurvedic tonics are used)

Old-age care:
Social security and provisional plans for retirement are hardly realistic for people from economically poor environment. Since the traditional family structures are splitting up in India as well, the problems for old people to find a secure place in society are rapidly increasing.
In June 2003, the founders had taken up 2 abandoned old men into the ashram's fold & care, on the grounds of lacking family support and poverty. Since then more and more elderly people came to the ashram to ask for a place to stay and help.

Self-sufficiency:
The ability of the ashram to generate funds on its own, for its social work projects, is one of our prime goals. In cooperation with a local college department which focuses on organic farming, we are producing rice, fruits and vegetables.

As part of the self-sufficiency efforts of the ashram, the cowshed produces milk and the necessary cow dung for the bio gas plant (linked to the kitchen) and the manure production.

Our objective for the future is to produce enough manure for sale on the local market, since it is becoming a sought after product among farmers. The yield on the ashram land, however, still doesn’t cover the ashram’s daily need of vegetables, rice and fruits.

We have made it our goal to set up a school for underprivileged children, to give them education with our usual care & love & common sense. By infusing fresh life into the school life of the underprivileged sections of society, we want our school to become a role model for other school projects. The education should be present-day project-work oriented, teaching practical skills as well as knowledge and how to use it in one’s everyday life. The project would incorporate some of the guidelines similar to those practiced in the Educare system developed in Sri Sathya Sai Babas schools in Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh.

Estimated costs for setting up a school amounts to Rs. 70,00,000; this includes the construction of a school building, furnishing the class rooms with appropriate teaching equipment (benches and chairs, blackboards, library, computer lab etc.).

It is our goal to make a dignified life possible for elderly people without family support and financial security. Some of them have been literally picked up from the streets, some others have been brought to us by a son or a daughter, who are themselves not capable of supporting their (grand)father/mother. Please, visit the photo gallery on our website for some photos of our aged ashramites.

After completion of the construction of both blocks of the New Old-age home, the ashram can now accommodate 25 old-age home inmates.

The ashram's expenses for all the necessities of life for one elderly person amounts to a minimum of ca. Rs.2,500 per month (food, medicines, clothes, maintenance of building, electricity, etc.).

To expand our agricultural activities more land and volunteers are needed. Organic farming requires extensive attention, especially in the beginning, from people with practical knowledge and experience.

To proceed with this project more swiftly, additional funds for land purchase and support for the cultivation are needed.

Overall, the monthly expenses for maintaining the children's home, old-age home, cowshed and garden:
Rs. 4,00,000.

The fact that the Aum Pranava Ashram incorporates both, children’s and old-age home within the same premises as well as our goal of self-sufficiency sets it apart from other organizations.

Trust

Yes

http://www.aumpranavashram.org/