SANDHAN is a non-profit, non-governmental and secular organization founded in 1983. The organization imbibes in practice a philosophy of allowing people to discover themselves. Its activities are rooted in a basic framework which values diversity, respects people's knowledge and places confidence in their capacity to learn. Socio-economic forces, caste, class and gender have increasingly pushed a significant section of the society to the sidelines. Two decades ago, SANDHAN took upon itself to help them back into the mainstream with a vision to evolve and play a substantial role as a national resource center for integrated education of adolescents and children, bringing the concerns of health, life skills and livelihood closer to academic enterprise. Peace and progress through probe and partnership, perhaps, best define SANDHAN. Inspired by the vision of a just and equitable society in which people live in dignity and harmony, SANDHAN aims to counter the processes of marginalisation through systematically designed education. As a Resource Agency, it endeavours to respond to specific and diverse educational expectations from ground level initiatives in Rajasthan and across the country. At the policy level, its agenda is to feed authentic research in planning processes and sensitise policy makers to respond to educational needs

	It addresses the learning needs of poor children, out-of-school adolescent girls and boys and deprived women and men through appropriate research and training.
	For strengthening the above sets of activities, it takes responsibilities for training and orientation of government functionaries as well as voluntary groups engaged in developmental activities.
	Wholesome networking of like-minded interveners to consolidate the impact on the ground is a major consideration cutting across all activities.
	SANDHAN's activities are rooted in a basic framework which values diversity, respects people's knowledge and places confidence in their capacity to learn.

From the year 2000, Adolescent education became the prime focus of SANDHAN while continuing its linkage with education of children from marginalized groups.

The emphasis has been on evolving theoretic clarity on issues relating to marginalisation, social exclusion and their causal relationships to arrive at a sensitive realisation of solutions within the basic framework of gender equality. SANDHAN believes that theory alone is inadequate and research should offer choices, enable decision-making and, finally, lead to action for change.

In the past eight years SANDHAN has contributed towards education and development through a cycle of interlinked processes – research, training, evaluation and theory building. These have been undertaken in a collaborative manner through a growing network of governmental and non-governmental organisations.

SANDHAN has gained extensive experience, through its various national and state level interventions, research on issues related to the marginalized and under-privileged adolescents and children; participation in several community based initiatives. This has enabled the team to understand and comprehend issues related to integrated education of adolescents and children as well as provide successful innovative solutions at several occasions.

SANDHAN has maintained a strong national presence and established networks at grassroots.

Currently, as a resource agency the activities of SANDHAN can be categorized in following four heads –

 

	Support to Doosra Dashak, Rajasthan
	Support to other ongoing Community Based Initiatives across the country
	Assistance to SSA through innovation for ensuring Quality Education; Residential Educational Courses: Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya and NPEGEL schemes
	Research, Advocacy and Process Reviews : GoR, GoI and International agencies.
SANDHAN has evolved Life Skill Education Training Modules both in English and Hindi for Ministry of Youth Affairs and for Mahila Samakhya GoI. SANDHAN is currently attempting to weave the LSE approach in the state designed curricula for schools.