Issue 1/Under a Tree

Parallel Education. Excerpt.

Excerpted from "Parallel Education and Effective Community Action in Delhi" by Bathang, blog.logos.co, 16 August 2026. Interview with Devisha, Steward of Logos Circle / Delhi.

Logos Circle / Delhi didn't spend weeks debating what issue to tackle first. During their first meetup, they found a local initiative already doing important work, went to see it for themselves and listen to the challenges faced, and asked: How can we help?

For Logos Circle / Delhi, that meant supporting a group of volunteers already teaching children at risk of falling through gaps in the Indian capital's education system, in the open air — literally under a tree — and asking what would help make their work more stable.

How did you discover the education initiative, and why did you pick it?

We found it through a friend, who saw that these classes were going on near society in an open ground, where a group of volunteers were already running open-air tuition classes for children in Delhi NCR, quite literally under a tree. No building, no funding, no institution behind them. Just people who decided these children shouldn't go untaught.

We picked it because it was already alive. We're not there to arrive with a solution and tell a community what it needs. We're there to find something people are already doing against the odds and make it durable. It's also unambiguously winnable: we can't fix education in Delhi, but we can help one learning group go from fragile to stable, and we'll be able to point at the difference.

How was the Circle's help received?

It was our first session, so we just went, sat, listened, and asked questions about what are the gaps in their education.

Five of our volunteers spent the day with around 65 children in genuinely brutal heat. We sat with them, went through what they were learning, and ran a small supplies drive: notebooks and basic materials. Our position from the first conversation was that they are the institution and we're there to make their work sustainable.

The children showing up at all is the part I'd emphasise. Nobody makes them come. There's no register, no consequence for skipping. They walked through 40-plus degree heat because someone said there'd be a class. That tells you the demand isn't the problem.

Is there scope for Logos technologies?

Yes, but not with the children, as most of them don't have phones or computers; the beneficiaries are not online, but the technology serves the coordination layer around them. That layer is real, and it has real problems:

Tutor and volunteer coordination.
A materials archive on Logos Storage.
Transparent community funding — small-donor education funding in India has a real trust problem: people want to give but don't believe that the money actually arrives. Transparent, auditable allocation is a direct answer to that.

The Indian government plans to upgrade school libraries this year. Will it close the gap?

I think it's genuinely good news, and I don't want to be cynical about it. Delhi is upgrading 125 school libraries with digital devices and kiosks, and setting up thousands of smart classrooms. But it won't close the gap, for a simple structural reason: these upgrades reach children who are inside the system. The children we teach are outside it.

The children we work with don't primarily lack devices. They lack an adult with time who knows exactly where they're stuck. That's not something you can procure.

That's really what a parallel institution means to us. Not opposition, but coverage of the space the existing system doesn't reach.

Interview by Bathang for the Logos Blog, 16 August 2026.