Children around a round table painting with their hands, a facilitator among them, bowls of colour on the table.

The people

At Kadam, thirty children have three adults with them all day. What those adults notice is written down, and the next week is planned around it after the children have gone home.

When we asked the children at our 2026 summer camp what the best thing about it had been, more of them wrote about the adults than about any single activity. We had planned activities. The children answered with people.

The team

Aditya Jain, crouching on a rooftop with hills behind him.

Bismay Ranjan Pradhan, standing at a railing beside a field.

Sunita, bending over the flooded paddy field with a rice seedling in her hand, smiling.

Ruby, standing in the classroom in front of the children's paper work on the wall.

Gulafsha Naaz, seated at a desk in the office.

Sakshi, writing in a notebook in the classroom, the children's work on the wall behind her.

Three of the six live here. When the children have gone home, the people who plan tomorrow are still on the campus where it will happen.

Friends of Kadam

People who believe in this and hold a piece of it.

Vaibhav, in a pink kurta, holding up a paper craft in the hall.

Simran, in a green shirt, hands on hips.

The Elders

Three people we go to when we are not sure.

Sadanand ji, white-haired, smiling, under a tree.

Pradeep Jain on a staircase, holding up a very long white radish with its leaves.

Naveen Vasudevan laughing, in a striped shirt, under the trees.

What the adults hold themselves to

We are a team of passionate individuals, working for purpose and meaning. The school is a community that teaches by embodying: we would rather inspire than instruct. It is a learning community before it is a teaching community, so the adults learn alongside the children, and because the curriculum is alive, the adults have to be. We do inner work together, without a formula. And the person leading it is expected to be asking honest questions of themselves.

That is a short version of thirteen principles. The long version is on the page for people who might join us.

Facilitators and parents around a round table in the classroom, a child on a red chair among them. — Parents and facilitators at the table.

The parents

Parents are welcome to share what they know with the children, and some take a subject regularly. Once a month there is a parents' circle, where we sit down together and go through what we are noticing, and where parents learn about their children and about ways of learning and being.

Come any morning between nine and one, while the children are here. The team is on the campus from half past eight to half past four. WhatsApp 9997900345. Where we are