The Pravara Rural Education Society (PRES) was established in July 1964 at Pravara, Loni, a large village in Maharashtra state in India. It is located between Pune to the South and Nashik to the North. It was the brainchild of Padamshri Vitthalrao Vikhe Patil, a leader of the cooperative movement. Patil, who had been deprived of avenues of formal education, had the visionary belief that socioeconomic development could only be triggered and sustained through education. The society was launched with an English medium school as the maiden venture.
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Today, the Society brings together rural educators, community members, education experts and volunteers from inside and outside Maharashtra to pioneer new models of education based on needs of the rural masses. It has plans of reaching out to the students from the North East where quality education is still not universally accessible. It has also established informal contacts with schools and colleges abroad - notably in Europe - for mutual exchange of students in the future.
Padam Bhushan Sh Balasaheb Vikhe Patil is the Chairman of the Society, and Ashok Vikhe Patil is the Executive Chairman.
Progress
The Pravara Rural Education Society now has a bouquet of colleges and schools. These include 11 technical colleges, 6 senior colleges, 6 English medium schools including a Sainik School and 32 Marathi medium schools. In all, over 40,000 students are presently on the rolls of these institutions.