Prayas Sevankur

Our agenda is to help individuals & organizations to find out their own agenda. We feel that ‘WHY’ is missing in our day to day living & that is the major cause of most of the sufferings & problems of today’s world. ‘WHY’ is the root for all scientific innovations & also for all spiritual searches. If there is no WHY of living, we are likely to get entangled in HOW of living. That’s the misery of today’s world.

Dr. Avinash Saoji, the founder of ‘PRAYAS’, after passing out MBBS from GMC, Nagpur in 1983 decided then only ‘what not to do in his life’. One thing he decided was not to apply his knowledge & skills for making money, but to use it for those who are in need. He lived at & worked for villages, for initial 22 years, where no services were available. He also decided not to go for post-graduation, as he believed in reaching out to masses with basic knowledge, rather than giving more specialised services to few. He worked with a NGO in tribal & rural area for 10 years, as full time volunteer, mainly in the field of community health. PRAYAS emerged out as the need felt by Dr. Avinash Saoji to work independently, to move forward towards the destination. PRAYAS believes that equilibrium in all four dimensions of health (Life) viz.; Physical, Mental, Social and Spiritual, is an essential prerequisite for actualization of innate human potential and the contentedness in life. It is absent in lives of most of us today, mainly because of the craziness for money & power & the materialistic attitude in general.

Dr. Avinash Saoji PRAYAS worked for the marginal section of community, provided them proper developmental opportunities & tried to relieve some of their pains. On the other side we tried to get involved the better off section of community so that they also can experience the satisfaction & contentedness of life by sharing their resources with the needy one. This section of community is also having its own problems, because of their self-centered & highly materialistic attitude, for which also PRAYAS is working. PRAYAS worked for initial 22 years at the grass root level by various health & educational programs for rural & tribal population. Then the focus is shifted to motivating & involving youths in social activities. Now PRAYAS is mainly playing the role of catalyst, with many NGOs working in health, education, helping farmers, rural development & other sectors. We work with them in their vision & capacity building, resource mobilization, liasoning, trainings as the mentor. We started activities at Amravati out of the need to have a field lab for Sevankur fellows.