This Silicon Valley Engineer Believed Every Child Deserves a Dignified Classroom — So His Initiative Rebuilt 150 Rural Schools in India

In 2003, a small group of Indian engineers in Silicon Valley did what many homesick immigrants do on weekends — they formed a band, staged a drama troupe, and put on shows to raise a little money and feel a little less far from home.

"We used to raise money through the shows, and we practiced hard every weekend to be able to contribute," recalls Vadiraja Bhatt, one of the founders. But underneath the fun was something heavier. "We also had this question — what are we doing for our country?"

That question found its answer after a phone call from a headmaster in coastal Karnataka. Monsoon rains had caused part of his school building in Karkala to collapse.

"There was rain, and then the whole thing happened — the school fell off," Bhatt remembers. With no classrooms left standing, children were sitting outside on benches just to keep attending school. "That really made me want to reach out and do my bit," he says.

OSAAT’S Chairman B V Jagadeesh, who was there at the start too, remembers the same period. 

Nearly 25 years ago, he and a few others came across a rural middle and high school "in an extremely dilapidated condition," with unsafe classrooms and no basic environment for learning. Rebuilding it became the template for everything that followed. "Seeing the transformation and the happiness and renewed confidence among the students was profoundly inspiring," he says.

Many in Bhatt's circle had been educated almost entirely for free by, in his words, "the most committed, talented and creative government school teachers" India had to offer. Seeing how little had reached the next generation of rural children was impossible to look away from.

That personal debt to government education runs through OSAAT's leadership. Jagadeesh, traces his own commitment back to his own classroom. "I studied in government schools in Bagalur village from grades one through seven, so I know firsthand how important a school can be in shaping a child's confidence, aspirations and future," he says.

Bhatt and his team's first response was modest — a $3,000 fundraiser built around a single music performance.

It became the seed of One School At A Time (OSAAT), a volunteer-run non-profit that has since rebuilt more than 150 government schools across 11 Indian states — without ever charging a family or paying a single volunteer.

"It was like an oasis in the desert"

Nowhere is OSAAT's impact more visible than at Melavanki School, where Iranna Kadakol has been headmaster since 2010. When he started, the school had two rooms, one teacher, and 19 students.

The only other school in the area was a........

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