Vidyanjali CSR Meet for School Education Held in Gurugram

The Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL) of the Union Ministry of Education held a National Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Meet for school education at Gurugram in Haryana on 31 October 2026. The meet was convened through Vidyanjali, the department's school volunteer programme, and its purpose was to draw government, companies, states and union territories and implementing agencies closer together so that CSR money works harder for schools.

What Vidyanjali is

Vidyanjali is a DoSEL initiative that tries to strengthen government and government-aided schools through organised participation by communities and the private sector. At its centre is a digital platform that connects a school with volunteers, organisations and CSR partners, so that a contribution may take the form of a service, an activity or an asset rather than cash alone. Its CSR side rests on two modules, the CSR Module and the Adopt-a-School Module, through which an organisation can pick up a school's stated requirement and help meet it.

The CSR-State Interaction

The central session of the day was the CSR-State Interaction. It seated company representatives alongside State Nodal Officers, DoSEL, the Programme Management Unit and the National Informatics Centre. The session was used to look for ways of working together, to let CSR organisations and states get to know one another, and to talk through projects that could be taken up for schools on the basis of the needs those schools had themselves identified.

What the states presented

States and union territories set out their own experience under the programme. Andhra Pradesh spoke on how Vidyanjali has been put into practice, Karnataka on the adoption of schools, Mizoram on the part played by community participation and Delhi on innovations and allied activities.

Agencies and companies

Implementing agencies including ChildFund India, SARD India, the Inspiring Seniors Foundation and the ETI Foundation described how they help bring CSR support to school development. In the technical sessions, representatives of the State Bank of India and Bharti Airtel presented the work their organisations have taken up for school education, and the presentations turned on how corporate participation adds to a school's resources and improves the setting in which children learn.

Who was present

Additional Secretary in DoSEL, Archana Sharma Awasthi, and Economic Advisor in the department, A. Srija, attended along with other senior officials of the ministry.