The founder of Jnana Prabodhini, Late Shri V. V. alias Appa Pendse was an educationist, social organiser, patriot and an active ideologue. In 1962, he envisioned an organisation for putting into practice the thoughts of Swami Vivekanand — his inspiration — of changing the face of the Nation, through Man-making Education. Traditionally, this effort follows the concept of ‘Dharm – Sansthapana’ i.e., societal resurgence and reconstruction, a cyclic phenomenon propelled by our ancient heroes and saints. Centuries ago, this was advocated by Saint Ramdas and reiterated in the recent past by Maharshi Dayanand, Swami Vivekanand and Yogi Aurobindo.

A complete metamorphosis of our ancient society into a vibrant nation, with spirituality at its core and manifestation of excellence and modernity into an outwardly diverse yet internally integrated human life, is the vision of Jnana Prabodhini. A new integration has been envisaged for this. Combining spirituality with modern technology; human potentials like intelligence and giftedness are to be harnessed into leadership abilities and social concern. It is believed that while triggering one’s achievement motivation, it could be possible to submerge its outcome into the service of humanity with compassion. This also matches with the concept of ‘Trusteeship’ propounded by Mahatma Gandhi.

The Mission

Knitting an organisation of selfless workers, leading directly and indirectly, the social movements to transform their respective working fields, is the mission of Jnana Prabodhini. This needs a continuum in education and training processes, both for boys and girls, men and women of all age groups; from pre-schooling to real-life situations. That requires building a multi-dimensional institution with an experimental character in leadership development in all walks of life. This is not a one-time process, but continuous experimentation is required to evolve processes and methods of encouraging people of all age groups to undertake tasks and challenges in various work fields of life.

Leadership Development

Being a Psychologist by profession, Shri Appa Pendse had studied various styles of leadership for his doctoral thesis. It had given him the confidence that if congenial atmosphere exists or is created, the motivation for changing the society gets triggered, more precious so, in the intellectually gifted students. They become even minded, balanced and dedicated workers who can competently fight any contingency and bring about a desirable change in various walks of life. He was aware and the same was empirically proved later, that ‘intelligence’ is prevalent in all socio-economic strata of the society. He also knew that the conventional concept of Intelligence Quotient (IQ) was fading out fast and an in-depth model was required to give a profile of everybody’s intelligence. There could be as many as 120 facets of intelligence. How to identify these facets in the impressionable age and harness their development through education and training to help them later in real life situations, has been a great challenge. Initially, this gave rise to a unique institution conducting supplementary enrichment programmes for brilliant students at the high school level. Over a period of 50 years now, it has emerged into a well spread and multi-dimensional organisation conducting various experiments in Motivation Building and Attitude Formation, in various work fields with a view to providing a conducive environment for leadership development, required to bring about the desired social change in our country.