About Us

In mid 1990s, a group of young people dreaming of bringing education to all realised that the education system in present form is not able to attract excluded communities. Later it was corroborated in census 2001 when it was found that in Bihar the percentage growth of literacy in SC grew from 6.0% (1961) to 28.5% (2001), in which the literacy rate of Musahar community grew from 2.1% (1961) to 9.0% (2001). They found that the creative potential of the excluded communities does not get recognized and is not supported in the present education system. Their informal learning system based on their folk games, folk plays, folk stories, folk paintings and such other learning activities, which creates base for better participation and success in formal learning system does not find place in the modern learning system.  This is one of the main reasons for their non-participation and non-retention in the school system. Thus their self-esteem does not grow to the desired level and they are trapped into a vicious cycle of less learning, less productivity and less income. Their participation in the political process also becomes less representative.

Thus the group decided to work for developing and promoting a learning system based on creativity taking into account the local cultural context. Then began consultations, discussions, seminar and workshop and in the process a concept of Creative Learning was born. As most of the members of the group were alumni of a government run residential school, Netarhat Residential School, they also thought that as they have been brought up at the cost of a large number of children of the society, it is their bounden duty to work for those at whose cost they have been groomed. So spirited by a concern of giving back and to disseminate and promote the idea of creativity and creative learning, Association for Promotion of Creative Learning (APCL) was established as a not- for- profit organization in 1997.