The union territory of Puducherry consists of four small unconnected districts: Puducherry, Karaikal, and Yanam on the Bay of Bengal and Mahé on the Arabian Sea. It is a small town on the Coromandel Coast, around 164 km from Chennai.

The union territory human development index in 2017 was 0.730 which is higher than the national average of 0.639 as per Global Data Lab and ranked 7 among the states and UTs.

We started our work in 2005 in Puducherry. We began with various programmes to improve educational quality: the Computer Aided Learning Programme, Learning Guarantee Programme, Education Leadership Development Programme, and so on. Around 2012, we moved from a ‘programme mode’ to an ‘institutional mode’, building the professional capacities of key stakeholders through multiple modes of engagement via workshops, voluntary teacher forums, exposure visits, seminars, etc.