In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic brought schools across rural India to an abrupt standstill, formal education for many rural students did not merely pause, it was pushed to the margins of everyday life. For many students, unreliable internet connections and a single shared family mobile phone made formal education feel distant and a lost cause.

It was at this moment, Devayani Tirthali, Abhijit Kapre, and Sameer Honwad began asking a question that mattered deeply: How can learning endure when technology access is unequal and educational systems struggle to support most marginalized learners? Akshay Kedari, who ran a maker lab at a rural school, soon joined these conversations. Together, they formed a research–practice partnership at a Jnana Prabodhini run school near Harali village in Maharashtra. At its core, this RPP is rooted in relationality, nurtured through trust, shared commitment, long-term relationships, and a profound belief in the resilience of rural communities.

What began as a response to the crisis has, over six years, grown into a vibrant and expanding collaboration of educators and researchers. Today, the partnership continues to work with passion and purpose to address not only formal technology based learning, but the many urgent educational challenges facing rural India, guided by the conviction that lasting change emerges through relationships, listening, and collective action.