Where It All Began

Learn about the origin of Sapna Education and how our journey began — from a single idea in 2019 to a growing movement empowering rural Indian students to dream bigger, reach higher, and pursue university education.

2019

The Beginning

Sapna Education was born from a simple idea: to connect passionate university students with high schoolers in rural India who lacked access to educational support. Our first trip took place as a small side project in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore. With just a few volunteers and limited resources, we saw the incredible potential of what a week of mentorship and teaching could spark in young students — the beginning of dreams that might otherwise have gone unrealized.

2020

First Official Trip

Building on the success and lessons of our pilot, we organized our first official volunteer trip — this time with students from the University of Oxford. It marked the start of Sapna Education as a structured program. Volunteers taught across a variety of subjects, engaged deeply with the students, and returned with stories of impact and transformation, both for themselves and the young people they worked with.

2020

First Official Trip

2022

Scaling Up

By 2022, Sapna had grown in ambition and reach. We welcomed a larger group of volunteers and ran our biggest program yet, teaching over 150 rural high school students. The week-long intensive classes were followed by continued online support, forming a stronger bridge between volunteer efforts and long-term student success. This was a turning point — proving that our model could scale while still delivering personal, high-quality support to students.

2024

Deepening Impact

Our most recent trip was our most comprehensive yet. We introduced a structured mentoring program that continued well beyond the 10-day visit, allowing volunteers to guide and support students throughout their academic year. We also laid the foundations for a new site in Gujarat, expanding our reach and building local partnerships to help bring the Sapna model to more communities. With each step forward, our mission — to inspire 100,000 Indian students to pursue university over the next decade — becomes more achievable.

2024

Deepening Impact

Our Mission

Our mission is to inspire 100,000 rural Indian students to pursue higher education over the next decade.

Only 24% nationally have higher education in India, in rural parts this can reach as low as 5%. At Sapna Education we want to change that by showing Indian students that learning and education can be fun and practical, something that we take for granted in the West.

Our twice-yearly volunteering trips bring UK university students to India for a 10-day teaching program with ongoing mentoring. We've already inspired hundreds, and aim to reach 100,000 students in the next decade. Sapna means 'dream', our mission is to help rural Indian students dream big.