It began before it had a name

In 2019, after finishing her masters, our founder Devyani moved to Tillu, a small Himalayan village near Dharamshala that did not appear on Google Maps. She came for field research, not with a proposal or a grant plan, and spent her first weeks simply watching village life.

What she saw, every afternoon, were five or six children from the nearby government school wandering after class. Studying after school was not part of anyone's routine: no tuition, no coaching, no role models in the village. These were children from underserved, marginalised communities, and the gap was never curiosity. When you grow up never seeing anyone around you succeed through education, opening a book on your own initiative is an act nobody has taught you to imagine.

So she started sitting with them in a small learning circle. No classroom, no formal curriculum, no hierarchy. The motto was the whole model: Padhenge aur Padhaenge. We will learn, and we will teach. Seniors helped juniors, juniors surprised seniors, and every child turned out to have something to contribute.

Then in March 2020, COVID-19 shut the schools. The village had no smartphones, no usable internet, no way to reach online classes. Opportunity disappeared almost overnight, and nationally, dropouts surged. But the circle refused to shrink. Families and nearby villages joined in, and through the pandemic we focused on keeping learning alive, protecting children's confidence and mental well-being, and holding a safe space on the open ground where the circle met. Among the children we worked with directly: zero dropouts.

That was the moment a circle became an organisation. Samta Tillu was formally registered as a charitable trust in 2022, but the work had been rooted in the community for years before it had paperwork.

"Uncle school toh band hai, ab tuition bhi na lagaye."

Ishaan, one of the first five students, arguing on day one that if school was closed, tuition should be closed too. He lost the argument and stayed.