The heart of our giving and the soul of our business – the Shakti Education Centre is at the heart of all of our giving. It’s grown from a donated laptop into a fully-fledged classroom that aims to get children back into mainstream education.

The centre was founded in 2019 by a former primary school teacher, and her colleague who has a master’s degree in social work. We have partnered closely with the foundation to construct a school building, and fund a full time teacher, stationary, uniforms and health camps. 

The education centre isn’t intended to replace school, rather it works as a bridge to get children who haven’t had the privilege of attending formal schooling up to speed and help them enter formal education, while supporting them with homework and after-school classes. 

In 2025, we’re increasing funding to provide a mental health counsellor, a life skills teacher, twice-weekly meals for the children, a television to learn from, and we’re funding private schooling for 5 bright children. 

In addition, we are investing in the 300 families that surround the centre’s surrounding community with medical camps, water purifiers, deworming tablets, and sanitary pads for girls.

Lastly, we have set up a skills development centre to provide training for the mothers of children. By renting a centre, buying sewing machines and hiring a trainer we can help set them up with stable careers and create opportunities for them and their children.

Our work with the Shakti Education Centre was so meaningful that we decided to search for an equivalent school near our other main centre of production – Agra. We found what we were searching for in the Santosh Rani Shastripuram School. 

We partnered with Kishor Exports to form the Kishor Shakti Foundation which we jointly fund and allows us to create an impact in the local community. This school is operated by an NGO and provides high-quality schooling for a highly subsidised cost to children that would otherwise be unable to afford private schooling. The school has been gifted land which allowed them to build good facilities and is financed by a number of donors, which now includes us.

Over and above our work in local schools we have also committed to plant a tree for each Shakti Mat purchased. Responsible tree planting isn’t the answer to all environmental issues, but it supports life, helps restore balance, and revitalize our natural world. 

Through our partnership with Tree-Nation, it also empowers developing communities. Your purchase plants one tree and funds its upkeep by locals who get paid fairly for their work. You’ll be able to track the progress of your tree, and watch it grow in time.

In further partnership with Kishor Exports, we have kick-started our own plantations in and around their factories in Agra and Ranchi. The Agra plantations are focused on adding green spaces to the city and reducing the impacts of acid rain caused by pollution.

Millions of people are still without access to safe water. So, in 2023 & 2024 we took a leap of faith and committed a significant donation to Evidence Action, a new charity established to improve the safety of water in India. 

In contributing to this initiative, we became of around 10 donors sponsoring the funding of a pilot study which aimed to validate the effectiveness of adding chlorine to drinking water sources in a number of rural Indian villages. 

Since then, the Indian Government issued an advisory notice encouraging all states to follow Evidence Action’s recommendations based on this pilot study. Right now, this charity is in a state of “watch this space” as they install a further 400 systems to demonstrate the value in a second study.