Education: Helping Our Students
"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."
We believe that education is the key to increasing social mobility and creating a rewarding sense of purpose in people’s lives. We understand the inequalities inherent to education in our country and around the globe and do our part in alleviating them. To us, true education is not just teaching the core curriculum, but giving students the tools and confidence to live happy independent lives. Students shouldn’t just learn how to think, but how to live, how to eat, how to love, and how to celebrate. We aid in education through scholarships, providing services to schools like meditation classes, donating to universities, and donating to non-profits in education.
What We've Accomplished
In a time of increasing political unrest and polarization the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi is more important than ever to teach young, socially active students. Although it consists of three pillars that Gandhi saw as equally important, Inner Peace/Transformation, Upliftment of All (Sarvodaya), and Insistence on Truth (Satyagrah), the latter is the one that is most well-known. To even out this imbalance the RNP Foundation collaborated with the incredible staff at CSU Fresno to create a learning center emphasizing the other two pillars of Inner Peace and Sarvodaya.
Despite being based out of Bakersfield, the RNP Foundation members try living by the quote Gandhi so loved “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam – The Whole World is my Family” and thus had no problem reaching outside our home city to work with our brothers and sisters in Fresno. With a donation of 1.5 million dollars for its establishment, the MK Gandhi Center: Inner Peace and Sarvodaya will be part of CSU Fresno’s philosophy department and will have a class on Gandhian philosophy every semester along with 5 events a year which will include guest lecturers, workshops, essay competitions and much more. Additionally, there will be a portion of the library dedicated do the Center with literature on Mahatma Gandhi and his philosophy.
Since education is so important to shaping the future of our world and helping to right the wrongs and injustices in the world, the RNP Foundation directly awards scholarships to promising young students who are from challenging backgrounds or who are studying to help those who are from such backgrounds. We want to award scholarships to promote greater equity in educational opportunities. Additionally we make grants to small local non-profits who are doing this work such as the Mexican American Opportunity Foundation.
December 1, 2020
Mount Tamalpais College’s mission is to provide intellectually rigorous education programs, free of charge, to people at San Quentin State Prison; to expand access to quality higher education for the incarcerated, and foster values of equity, civic engagement, independence of thought, and freedom of expression.
The Ravi and Naina Patel Foundation jumped on this mission, supplying for their educational programs, helping provide materials for the COVID emergency in prison, and to producing videos spotlighting the success and achievement of people who were previously incarcerated as they reintegrate in to society outside.
Ongoing Projects
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Upcoming Projects
Regenerative organic farming practices are a powerful way to improve our soil, our air, our water, and our health. While creating healthier foods, decreasing pollution, and drawing carbon out of the atmosphere back in to the soil; these practices can also have many practical and economic benefits for farmers. Despite the benefits, there are no education programs or resources dedicated towards helping farmers in Kern County transition to regenerative farming and thus an extremely low rate of adoption.
In order to change this situation, the RNP Foundation and Bakersfield College are working in partnership to create The Regenerative Agriculture Education Center. The Regenerative Agriculture Education Center would act as a living laboratory that would exhibit current practices in regenerative agriculture, offer non-credit workshops and courses, and act as a networking hub for connecting experts, farmers, students, consumers, and landholders. The advisory board consists of thought leaders in the field from industry experts, to educators, to innovative non-profits.
The center will consist of 2-10 acres on RNP Foundation land that will be farmed and maintained by BC student interns as well as the associated education infrastructure. The center will provide specialized workshops/courses, act as a knowledge hub for regenerative farming in Kern County, create an online certificate course, and maintain an “equipment library” of many tools necessary to transition to regenerative farming that local farmers could rent free of charge. All the course work in the center will be available not only to BC students, but anyone who’s interested.
This project is the meeting of our education and spirituality pillars. As long time meditators Amar Patel and Naina Patel of the RNP Foundation along with yoga teacher Christine Mcbride will be teaching mindfulness and yoga at the juvenile hall in Bakersfield. Mindfulness programs actually show the most significant results in children who are from high stress, poverty stricken, violent environments so we hope this program will be helpful at juvenile hall.
The lessons consist of a short mindfulness meditation at the beginning and end of school every day along with a session consisting of mindfulness meditation, breathing exercises, and yoga once or twice a week. Along with students, the teachers will be taught these techniques as well so that they will be able to have sessions with their students independent of us. The teachers will also be taught some “informal” meditations methods IE cooking meditation, dancing meditation, walking meditation, to deploy on their classrooms as they see fit.
