UWC Mahindra College (MUWCI) was founded in 1997 in Mulshi, Maharashtra. It is the first and only UWC pre-university college in India. In November of that year, 91 students arrived from across the world to a campus with more vision than infrastructure and began building something that had no model in the country.
Twenty-seven years on, the hillside that was bare on arrival supports a biodiversity reserve. Every tree on it was planted by a student or teacher who lived there.
The early years
The road to MUWCI's founding took seventeen years of groundwork. The UWC India National Committee was established in 1980. Government approval came in 1993. The foundation stone was laid in 1996 on a hillside in the Mulshi valley, in Pune, Maharashtra.
On 11 November 1997, Queen Noor of Jordan inaugurated the college. Ninety-one students from across the world began their two-year IB Diploma programme. It was the first UWC college in India. It remains the only one.
Everything on that hill today was built or grown by the people who came through it. Trees, paths, gardens, community. The biodiversity reserve that surrounds the campus began with a Kotak Group donation in 2006. Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh formally inaugurated it as Van Vihar Biodiversity Park on the college's tenth anniversary in 2008.
"To offer students a unique, unparalleled, and transformative college experience."