The Panaah Communities

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Panaah Communities aims to revolutionize family-based learning and livelihoods in India’s urban communities.

05/10/2026

Space scientist. IAS officer. Ethical hacker. Doctor. Entrepreneur. And then, written in the neat, unmistakable handwriting of two of our youngest scholars: “Kind.”

That is the energy on the Dreams in Progress board at Panaah Scholars.

Every single goal up there belongs to a high-potential kid from Pune’s urban communities, grinding through Grades 5 to 10 with us. We’re talking 20 hours of heavy-duty Math and Science every week, Olympiad-level puzzles, and a crew of mentors who refuse to let them settle for less than what they're capable of.

A board of ambitions is easy to put up. The real weight is in what happens next building minds that question everything, leaders who lift others as they climb, and kids who understand that tech and talent mean nothing without empathy.

There are 40 spots on that board, and they’re filling up one bold handwriting at a time.

If you could rewind to being 12, what would you have scribbled on that board? Drop it below, and send this to someone who believes in the next generation.

Sayed Mohammad Shoeb | Hasnain Naqvi | Aarshiya Das | Anjali | :Dhanshikha Sonkamble | M. | Sheykhh Safiyaa M.Sheykhh Safiyaa

25/09/2026

We believe a child can only learn as well as the person teaching them. So every year, before we ask more of our students, we ask more of our mentors.

Most children in our Pune communities never got the right tools at the right time to fall in love with reading. Closing that gap starts long before a child opens a book, it starts with how well their mentor is trained to teach it.

Annie has trained with us before. This year, she came back to go deeper: not just how to manage a classroom, but how to teach content well. Across our centres, mentors spent a session inside the Literacy Cycle, reading a story as learners themselves, arguing over inferences, and pointing to the exact line that proved their idea, before ever picking up a pen.

It's a small shift on paper. In a classroom, it's the difference between a child memorising an answer and a child learning to think.

What's one teacher who changed the way you learn? Tell us in the comments.

Aarshiya Das | Sayed Mohammad Shoeb | Hasnain Naqvi | Anne Eraplackal

21/09/2026

On the Innovative Inquiry wall, a Panaah Scholar wrote two questions this week: Can photosynthesis happen without sunlight? And what would happen if the Sun disappeared from our solar system?

No one asked them to write these.

Innovative Inquiry is Pillar 2 (P2) of the four pillars that shape Panaah Scholars, our programme for academically oriented children in Grades 5 to 10 across Ganesh Peth, Kashewadi, and Yerwada in Pune.

For many of these children, the right tools to ask questions like these out loud weren’t always available at the right time. So our sessions are built around curiosity first, formulas later.

Every week, the wall fills up with questions we don’t always have instant answers to.

That’s the point.

Because learning isn’t just about knowing the answer. Sometimes, it’s about learning to ask a better question.

What’s a question you remember asking as a kid that no one could fully answer? Tell us in the comments. We might just build a lesson around it.

Hasnain Naqvi | Sayed Mohammad Shoeb | Aarshiya Das | Anagha Joshi | Shovik Mal | M. | Sheykhh Safiyaa

18/09/2026

Ganpati season in Pune means celebrations, dhol, modaks, pandals… and sometimes, mysteriously, a LOT fewer kids in class. 😭😂

So we had a problem.
How do you convince children that showing up for school is still worth it when the entire city is celebrating?

Enter Bhau. 🫡
His duty? Make sure the kids don’t disappear on us. 😂

What started as a very real attempt to keep attendance from dropping during Ganpati turned into “Bhau Ki Duty”, a fun little reel built around the chaos, excuses and energy that come with this time of the year.

Because sometimes, keeping children engaged isn’t about giving them another lecture on attendance.
It’s about meeting them where they are, making them laugh, giving them something to look forward to, and making school feel like a place they want to come back to.

So yes, Bhau has officially been assigned duty.

Pandal bhi, Padhai bhi ✨

17/09/2026

Classroom in Patil Estate ✨

12/09/2026

The first classes have begun.

Six Pune Municipal Corporation schools. Grades 3 to 7. Around 350 children.

Our mentors are in these classrooms every week. Solvers has run its first sessions. Scholars begins shortly.
Classroom time is one part of it. We are conducting PTMs, meeting principals and teachers, and visiting homes where it helps, so we know where a child actually is before we decide what they need.

mrinmayi , our Associate Director, is steering this. Devyani Pawar🐼 , our Programme Lead, is with the mentors every day, holding us to what we promised each child.

Our thanks to the PMC Primary Education Department for the approval, to the headmasters who opened their schools to us, and to Bajaj Finserv CSR for backing this pilot from the start.

This is the start of something we have wanted for a long time. We cannot wait to see what these 350 children do with it.
🌱

Bajaj Finserv CSR | Leena Rajan | Kriplani | | Devyani | Aarshiya Das Aarshiya |

09/09/2026

Yesterday at Panaah’s Patil Estate centre, Sana’s classroom had a small challenge: make sounds and numbers click.

First came word families. Cat, bat, hat. Cap, map, tap. The children listened, spotted the patterns, and started finding words of their own. What looks like a simple language activity is actually building phonological awareness, the kind of foundation that helps children become confident readers.

Then the class switched gears: hundreds, tens and units. One number, three places, and suddenly a number wasn’t just a number anymore. It had structure. It had meaning.

This is what learning at Panaah looks like, mentors meeting children where they are, making concepts tangible, and giving them the time and attention to truly understand.

At Patil Estate, every session is another step towards stronger literacy, sharper mathematical thinking, and children who see themselves as capable learners.

Sayed Mohammad Shoeb | Hasnain Naqvi | Aarshiya Das

Address

Panaah Communities/Center Of Excellence
Pune
411002

Telephone

+919594749698

Website

http://www.panaahcommunities.org/

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