There was no email. No formal proposal. Just one phone call.
“We will do it,” he said. “Give me a week.”
That was Dr Kr. Arun Singh ( I call him Arun Ji), the first person to believe in the Literacy Project for Educators.
A quiet man with a rebel’s patience
I met him in January 2026, when he came to Dehradun for the Good Schools Alliance Governing Council meeting. Soft-spoken, humble, easy to underestimate.
I have met many education leaders on this journey. Arun Ji is one of the few I would call dabang, because his strength shows in what he does, not in how loudly he says it. He believes in learning, giving and growing, and you can see it in his actions.
Over our conversations, he told me about his life before school: the phases he went through, the odd jobs, and the years of figuring things out. He shared that in college, he was rebellious and always stood up to the odds. Nothing was handed to him ready; he and his co-mates have built it all together, and today what stands in Ballia is an example of the hard work over the years on the soil
A town that needed a beginning
In 2013, Arun ji and two co-founders started Sunbeam Ballia. As he told me, Ballia still lacked the educational culture it needed. So they set out to build one.
The school began with around 456 students. Today, it has 2,800 children and is one of Ballia’s major schools. Its students now represent the school at forums across the country.
Sunbeam Ballia is part of the larger Sunbeam family, and I have visited several of its campuses.
But Ballia carries its own identity, rhythm and pride. Arun ji didn’t set out simply to bring education to this town. He set out to change people’s lives.
The man behind the campus
Arun ji is also a man of ideas. He loves to write and create. He embraces new things, is ready to innovate, and has slowly changed the town’s learning culture.
When a place needs real reform, it has to start with a strong conversation. Then people have to be brought together for the community’s good. In Ballia, he picked up that baton.
Why this story matters to us
Ballia is the land of rebels, where India’s first spark of revolt in 1857 began. It felt right that the Literacy Project for Educators began its own small revolution for teachers from the same soil.
Very few people believe in something before it has proof. Arun Singh did. He opened his school to us, and he believed in making it a grand event. We will never forget that trust.
What’s next?
This is the first in a series about people across India who are quietly changing education. It isn’t a promotion, just people who believe in taking learning forward.
- Kunal Rajpurohit is a Manager at Learning Forward India Foundation. An alumnus of The Fabindia School in Bali, Rajasthan, he leads community-driven education initiatives across a network that is expanding to 100 schools.
