The Founder Mr.M.C.Ramesh hails from Mandur village. He born and brought in this village and came to Bangalore for higher studies. While doing his post graduate degree in Master of Social Work (M.S.W) in Bangalore University in the year 1991, his friends Mr. Mr.B.C.Patil & Mr.Shivappa had a discussion about their future plans after completion of their professional course. During the discussion, Mr
.M.C.Ramesh was felt that since they had exposure visits to various voluntary organizations, why not we all as a collective, initiate a development organization to give back our knowledge and skills to the needy people in our society particularly the rural masses. It is a not a sudden idea of Mr.M.C.Ramesh, it was there in his mind during his high school days too. So when his friends and he were talking about their dreams, he expressed his idea and it was supported by his friends. Thus “Vidyaranya” came into existence on 29th October 1991 in the village Mandur the native place of Mr.M.C.Ramesh. At the outset, the team felt that they could focus on health and sanitation and conducted awareness programmes for the Mandur villagers and also carried out a survey for constriction of house for houseless people and submitted a proposal to CAPART, New Delhi and got sanctioned 25 houses and built houses for the neediest people. While working with this project, the team found that the children with special needs were not access to the education and they were looked as unproductive by their parents and communities and thought of approaching DSERT, Bangalore for the ex*****on of “Integrated Education for Disabled Children (IEDC)” a programme finically supported by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), New Delhi and submitted a proposal to them for 32 various categories of children with special needs such as Mentally Challenged (MR), Visually Impaired (VI), Hearing Impaired (HI) and Orthopedically Handicapped (OPH) with one Resource Teacher. Now the organization has been focusing in 5 districts such as Bangalore Urban, Bangalore Rural, Hassan, Chikkaballapur and Ramanagar of Karnataka and has been executing different developmental programmes for women, aged, persons with differently abled, orphans, street children, slum children, adolescent girls, youths, farmers etc on education, economic, social, health, environment, ecology, cultural, welfare programmes for the aged, Persons With Disabilities, women empowerment, livelihood, energy, community property resources, water issues, agriculture etc.
