Beyond the Books: How a Kolkata School Teaches Girls to Build a Self-Sufficient Future

Adhigam Bhoomi students attend skill-based classes where they learn to weave clothes and mats from cotton. | Photo credit: Shrabana Chatterjee

A residential school for 1,000 girls in the suburbs of Kolkata is reimagining education beyond books and the four walls of the classroom. Through hands-on skill development based on real-life examples, young girls learn and pave the way for change.

Adhigam Bhoomi School of the non-profit organization Help Us Help Them runs this free residential school program where students have a textbook-free curriculum up to class 5 and learn their lessons through practical examples and life lessons.

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Adhigam Bhoomi campus in Joka, on the outskirts of Kolkata. | Photo credit: Shrabana Chatterjee

Here, girls learn 17 different skills, including ceramics, weaving, tailoring, farming and more. They also have a book-based education from 6th grade along with skill development to ensure they also fit into mainstream society. The initiators of the program say that the main idea behind this unique module was to help rural children develop enough skills to return home to their village and become long-term self-sufficient entrepreneurs.

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“They learn mathematics through weaving and counting patterns, they learn biology and agriculture through the food we grow on campus, they grow with their own hands for their own food, they make cleaning products, soaps in labs and they learn chemistry lessons,” said Rupa Bhattacharjee, deputy director of Adhigam Bhoomi. She said that initially the parents of the children, who mostly hail from tribal areas, were hesitant about the non-traditional teaching methods, but slowly came to appreciate the unique methods.

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Students learn to make their own sanitary napkins from scratch, learn how to weave cotton mats and fabrics, and soil science through ceramics. According to teachers, it has now become a zero-waste campus with a self-sustaining structure that helps them grow most of their food indoors and produce manure from food waste.

Adhigam Bhoomi students making sanitary napkins from scratch for their own use on campus | Photo credit: Shrabana Chatterjee

One of the co-founders of Help Us Help Them, Mukti Gupta, said they now have 100 schools across West Bengal running the same module that was started at Adhigam Bhoomi School in Joka.

“Our plan is to give a proposal to the West Bengal government and also to the Prime Minister to make this model a teaching model in as many schools as possible across India. This can be done within the available education budget of the country,” added Gupta. She also added that they want skilled young girls to return to their villages and start their own initiatives with things they can easily find in their own areas so that they can stop migrating outside for better jobs.

“We have been with them since we acquired the land. We want to help the children find skill-based jobs when they move on with their lives and pass out from there. We plan to expand up to class 10,” said Sajjan Bhajanka, chairman of CenturyPly. The company has supported this initiative since its inception.

Published – 21 Jun 2026 11:26 IST