India is the most beautiful country with diverse cultural practices of varied communities. Though we talk greatly about diversified communities in the nation we always tend to forget the most sidelined community-the tribal’s. India has the world’s largest tribal population, sadly it is also the most economically underprivileged in our country. One of the most significant measures to develop a community is EDUCATION.

As Nelson Mandela quoted right “Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world”, education will influence the socio-economic development amongst the scheduled tribes. It becomes an absolute and vital parameter to help the individuals to overcome income barriers, building confidence, bring sustainable development of their well-being and expand their horizon of the community when it comes to employment and personal growth.

The government of India see education as indispensable source to help the schedule tribes to cope up with national integration. According to the reports, the education ministry for tribal education along with the ministry of human resource development and the state government /UT administrations brought various schemes with the objectives of enhancing access to education in the tribal areas.

Despite the introduction of different schemes, the rate of literacy and education attainment of the tribal community lags way too behind. The disparity is even worse in tribal women when compared to men due to gender biases within the community. It is estimated that there are about 573 individual tribal groups with diverse socio-cultural lifestyle who are at various levels of social and economic development. One of the main abominable features is that the majority of them are scattered and live in small isolated habitations and in inaccessible areas of hilly terrains and inside the forests. Most of the tribal concentrated settlements lack in basic facilities like roads, transport, communication, electricity, hospitals etc. One of the reasons that contribute to the decline of literacy in spite of government support is due to their lack of accessibility to the resources.

Planning of education is purely based on norms pertaining to the population size and the distance and is not specific to the requirements of a tribal area. The national and provincial government of India have recognised the tribal groups and adopted flexible norms to provide access to primary education. One of the innovative and alternative approaches was the introduction of “community schools” replacing government schools in the region yielded good benefits.

With the rise of community schools in the region, providing education to the kids becomes very challenging due to various other factors. The lack of efficient teaching staffs is very disappointing. One of the undoubted reason is the lack of basic comforts for the non-tribal teaching staff who takes jobs involving residing in village results in a high rate of absenteeism and school dropouts.

In order to increase the rate of literacy in the tribal community, the tribal welfare development council seeks help from the NGOs to provide quality education in the government-run schools. Through various charities, an NGO can provide lots of facilities by raising money to meet their needs. Even some community schools are publicly funded.

Charity education in India popularised by NGO has helped the government in changing the lives of the tribal people. Every humanitarian act of educating a community brings enchantment not only to their lives but the whole society.