Prashanti Grama is the unfolding of a grand vision to establish an ideal model for a center of social service and the crown jewel of the various activities undertaken by the Prashanti Gurukulam Trust. In its philosophy, constitution and operation, Prashanti Grama consists of three units offering a high quality health, social and educational services. The major constructions at the site pertaining to a range of activities have been planned to be completed by 31st December 2007.

The Location:

Prashanti Grama is located at Asur Village, Kancheepuram District of Tamilnadu at about 45 Kms from Tambaram, Chennai. The silent, serene and unpolluted atmosphere of the village provides the ideal location for the project free from the hassle and the noise of the city life. There are about 15 villages around Asur that provide a potential opportunity to undertake extensive village service activities.

Units of the Project:

The three major units of the project are
1. Prashanti Health Centre
2. Prashanti Vocational Training and Community Centre
3. Prashanti Gurukulam

Prashanti Health Centre:

Medicine and medical care are important among the basic and crucial needs of human life. Inaccessibility to hospitals and high costs of medical care are the prominent hurdles preventing a good quality medical assistance to the village folk. Prashanti Health Centre is a sincere endeavour to reach the underprivileged village folk with the basic and primary medical assistance. The center would provide round the clock medical assistance both to basic and emergency needs of the people with the help of dedicated, qualified and competent experts in the field. All the treatments offered and the medicines supplied by the unit shall be totally free of cost, but matching the best in the industry.

The vision of Prashanti Health Centre:

1. Providing high quality primary health care and emergency care round the clock, seven days a week.
2. Providing ambulance facility to transport critical patients to good hospitals where the required medical care is available.
3. Maintaining a mobile medical unit to conduct health camps and health awareness programs in villages.

Prashanti Vocational Training and Community Centre:

More than 70% of Indian population lives in more than 550,000 villages (Wikipedia: 29 January 2007). In most of the villages, agriculture is the primary occupation. However, due to the lack of adequate employment opportunities, a greater percentage of village population is condemned to stay below poverty line. Prashanti Community and Vocational training center would train the villagers in vocations like preparing household consumables, tailoring, carpentry, basic computer literacy and computer related vocations. The other programs would consist of adult literacy, people empowerment programs, moral classes, English language classes, and personality development sessions and academic coaching. All these programs would be offered on fixed schedules with high levels of commitment to regularity, quality and productivity. On the whole, the center would aim at empowering the villagers, making their lives better and bringing the blessings of science and technology and modern life to their doors.

The Vision of Prashanti Grama:

1. Empowering village folk with literacy, employment and self-employment opportunities.
2. Complementing and supplementing the education of village children with additional inputs, extra coaching, English language courses and personality development programs.
3. Helping the village folk utilize their time and energy in positive ways to be productively and constructively useful to themselves and the society.

Prashanti Gurukulam

Prashanti Gurukulam would be the vision school conceived by Prashanti Gurukulam Trust. This school would offer high quality integral education combining cultural, moral, social and spiritual values and programs that would cater to total personality development with the regular curriculum offered by the Central Board of Secondary Education. Through its principles and practice, the school would produce students who would become physically strong, morally upright, mentally balanced, academically excellent and spiritually enlightened with multifaceted skills. They would in course of time live ideal lives and work for a significant amount of positive change.

There is an important reason why the school is set up in a village. During olden days, the traditional Indian schools were called Gurukulam and were located in silent abodes amidst abundant natural beauty. The students were entrusted under the care of a competent master called ‘Acharya’. The name indicates that the teacher himself was a practitioner of values in his daily life. The atmosphere of the Gurukulams along with the scholarship and nobility of the preceptors worked on every aspect of the students’ personality shaping it to perfection. Thus, the Gurukulams could produce complete individuals who could build a peaceful and prosperous society. The rural set up of Prashanti Gurukulam is aimed at simulateing the ambience of the Gurukulams free from the hassle and pollution of city life. The rural scenario would expose the students to the typical Indian life of villages and Indian culture apart from providing them with ample opportunities to engage in the service activities organized by the Prashanti Grama Project. In addition, talented and deserving students picked up from the village would have the opportunity to avail of high quality education at their end.

The School would make a blend of all that is good in the ancient and the modern life. Advancements in science and technology and education would be combined with the ideals and principles of the ancient wisdom and values. Thus, the school would aim at producing a new generation excellent in every regard, potential enough to work for universal welfare and bringing about a new age of peace and prosperity.

The Vision of Prashanti Gurukulam:

1. Providing a potentially charged atmosphere to mould the children free from the hassle and pollution of urban life and to benefit the students drawn from both cities and villages.
2. Offering high quality integral education combined with traditional values that would blend all that is good in the ancient and modern and contribute to character building and total personality development of the students.
3. Providing a wide forum for the students to experience the essence of Indian culture emerging from village life and to participate in extensive social service programs targeting the betterment of underprivileged village folk and improving the quality of village life.

The Spirit of Prashanti Grama:

Prashanti Grama is a kind of new and revolutionary experiment first of its kind. The spirit of Prashanti Grama is to evolve a culture that is sensitive to the needs of every individual who is a part of it. Bringing together the ancient wisdom and values and the gifts of modern science, the project can bridge the gap that has developed over centuries and make a cherished social dream come true. When the modern students would get exposed to the ideals of selfless service and the essence of Indian culture, the village folk would benefit from the knowledge, skills and dedication of the modern students. As a result, what would emerge from this endeavour is an ideal model that would set a phase for such healthy experiments to create a better society. Secondly, the project would address both immediate and long-term concerns. The immediate concern would be to work for the betterment of village life and give them what they lack in their day-to-day life. On the other hand, through a revolutionary education system, the project would also create a new generation that is sensitive to the need of the hour and emerge strong and dedicated to remedy the ills of the modern age to work for world peace.