Built from Hardship.
Sustained by service.

Mahatma Gandhi School was born from the heart of a man who once had no home, no classroom, and no promise of tomorrow. Orphaned at birth and raised in the slums by elderly labourers who earned a living breaking stones, Shri Vinayak Ganpat Deokar experienced hardship in its rawest form. He struggled through poverty, failed his 10th-grade board exams, waited tables to survive, and was later diagnosed with a severe heart condition. And yet, what could have ended his story became the beginning of a much greater one. A chance encounter with a mother unable to afford treatment for her child, who suffered the same heart disease as him, shifted something deeply within Vinayak. That moment, a meeting of pain and shared helplessness, marked the beginning of his life’s true mission: to rise above his suffering and serve others like him.

In 2002, he founded Jeevan Mitra Pratishthan Charitable Trust, initially to support patients battling cardiac, renal and cancer-related illnesses. But service, once sparked, only grows. By 2014, he went further, building a school for those most abandoned by the system: orphans, children of prisoners, children of sex workers, single mothers, domestic workers, and families crushed under intergenerational poverty.