Educate for Life is an engagement with the world around us, an active exploration of our capabilities and potentials, and the way in which they can be manifested. We do this through the medium of school building. In building schools we have the opportunity to engage with and share with diverse communities and work with them to create better futures for themselves and for ourselves; they, after all, are not the only communities with one or two problems that need ironing out. A school is an incredibly versatile medium through which a community can change and develop, and through with wider interventions can be undertaken, such as health-care and livelihood development. A school is also a highly culturally diverse instrument of change. Every society has children and engagement of the young is a key aspect of brighter futures. We look for the holistic truth that underlies learning beyond the academic or physical knowledge, and help our children see that truth too. As a result, the pedagogy of Educate for Life is as relevant in the UK as it is India, so one day we'll run a school or two here, too.

Our approach is based on non-violence, equity and self-rule. Hundreds of thousands of schools teach children to be dependant on teachers, desks and blackboards to learn and to be told what to do. We create an environment where children discover that they are self-learners and self-doers, that their fate lies in their hands, that they can be dependant on other people, but that they can also lead their own way.

We don't educate our children. We provide them with the means to increase their capabilities. In this manner they can gain the tools to lead the life that they see reason to value, and so be free. As much as they are dependant on their fields now, they are no less free and can be no more happy if they are educated but depandant on the factory floor instead.

Freedom is derived from choice, which is reliant on a few factors:

• financial state
• capacity
• independent mind
• health
• social equity
• options being available