In 2003, a 25 year old young alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and IIM Calcutta, having opted out of placements towards a lucrative corporate career, was driven by the inspiring exhortation of Swami Vivekananda of selfless service to those in suffering and make one’s life one with them. This youngman, Vinayak Lohani, thus inspired by spiritual and humanistic ideals of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, resolved to devote his entire life for serving ‘Divine in Man’ as taught by Swami Vivekananda. He gave up the prospect of a highly lucrative corporate career by not taking any placement from IIM. Immediately after passing out of IIM in 2003, with just 3 children in a small rented building on the outskirts of Kolkata, he started Parivaar.
But he had no resources. So in order to kickstart his mission, till the level of 15 children at Parivaar, he used to take some lectures for students appearing for Management entrance examinations and through that could meet the expenses of the set-up. Gradually people began to be inspired by this dedicated service and started to support the initiative and the number of children at Parivaar grew. At the end of 2004, Parivaar could purchase its own land to develop its permanent campus. Parivaar’s mission and theme began to attract dedicated youth, many of whom joined Parivaar as resident workers and began to become bearers of this mission.
In 2016, after 14 years of relentless service in Bengal and with many youth inspired to join him, Vinayak Lohani, in 2016, expanded Parivaar’s footprints into Madhya Pradesh.
Inspiration & Ethos
The inspiration behind Parivaar’s mission is the spiritual and humanistic teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. The central theme of Parivaar is Swami Vivekananda’s core teaching of ‘Divinity of Man’ and it is practically executed through ‘Shiva Jnane Jiva Seva’ (to serve the Divine in Man in a reverential spiritual attitude, in a spirit of worship) with core ideals being ‘Tyaga’ and ‘Seva’.
