Nidhi is a dedicated HR professional with extensive experience across various HR functions, including talent acquisition, training and development, employee engagement, and policy execution. She excels in relationship management, fostering positive employee experiences, and driving organizational success through strategic collaboration and independent contributions.

Throughout her career, Nidhi has held roles such as HR Officer at the Foundation for Reproductive Health Services India, HR Manager at Smile Foundation, and Jr. Officer HR at Deepalaya. She is adept at executing HR policies, managing recruitment processes, and ensuring seamless onboarding experiences. Nidhi’s commitment to working in challenging environments and achieving success through honesty and diligence makes her presence valuable and helpful to Protsahan’s team.

Payal has passed her 10th-grade and 12th-grade education from CBSE Board, and is presently pursuing her graduation in Aryabhatt College from Delhi Univeristy. She initially interned in our DigiLab, assisting with technical education and community engagement. As a Youth Peer Leader at Protsahan, she helps manage the centre’s data and its daily coordination activities. In her free time, Payal enjoys sketching and creating art.

A former Girl Champion Fellow, Anupam is now responsible for taking care of Girl Empowerment Center 05 under the guidance of Protsahan’s Head of Ground Operations. She has completed her Bachelor’s degree from SOL, Delhi University. As a Youth Peer Leader, she teaches and takes classes of girl champions up to Grade 5. Through, meditation & use of creative arts therapy, Anupam, is working directly with Girl Champions to help them navigate and heal from the trauma they experience. She engages with them through creative activities.

As part of the Fellowship, Anupam worked with Bala Janaagraha for her Social Action Project and worked towards mitigating begging in last-mile communities & increase awareness among children about safety and protection. She has also facilitated sessions on Digital & Financial Literacy, Gender & Leadership.

Jyoti is one of our newest Youth Peer Leaders and alumni of the year-long Girl Champions Fellowship. She is currently pursuing her Bachelor’s degree from SOL, Delhi University. She assists the Child Protection Team at GEC-02 in the Digital and Financial literacy training sessions conducted on a daily basis & also conducts sessions on career counselling with older Girl Champions at Protsahan GECs.

An avid writer and poet, Jyoti likes to express her thoughts on gender discrimination & other social stigmas through poetry and articles. Her article on “Dahej Pratha/Dowry” was published by Charkha Development Communications Network and was also featured in a Rajasthan newspaper.

An educationist by profession, Moushumi has completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Science, Education, and social work (M.SC/ MSW/ B.ED) from North Eastern Hill University & Delhi University. Her journey in the development sector began with Butterflies, a Delhi-based NGO where she worked for children in multiple roles and with different grassroots NGOs pan-India. After working for over a decade there, she moved to Protsahan with new energy and ideas. Her hobbies mainly include reading books and experimenting with various forms of cooking.

Moushumi has also worked with the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) in developing a curriculum for open basic education (OBE) and was also involved in developing lesson plans for children who are out of school and prefer to continue education through open schooling due to various circumstances. She also helped in enrolling children in formal school by developing a curriculum with the help of the Directorate of Education, Delhi.

Mallika is passionate about bridging the resource gap and find a sustainable solution to the unequal distribution of resources and opportunities in society. She wants to build safe, inclusive spaces for all. Challenging pre-existing gender norms and roles, Mallika aims to develop meaningful partnerships & collaborations and take Protsahan’s work further in building a community, which safeguards child rights, especially for adolescent girls.

Mallika has completed her bachelor’s in International Relations. A former Protsahan volunteer, Mallika has previously interned with organizations like Young Leaders for Active Citizenship, India Migration Now, and Dr Ambedkar International Centre. She has an avid interest in climate change, sustainable development and policy and hopes to imbibe sustainable green practices in Protsahan’s on-ground work.

Anjali is an extremely hard working youth peer leader from Protsahan’s alumni association of girl champions. She works with the centre coordinator at the Dwarka child protection center and supports the young girls with academics and child protection services in the community. She has avid interest in Humanities and has been very influential in advancing conversations of citizenship and democracy in the communities where we work. Highly empathetic, she doubles up as a ‘badi didi’ for the younger girl champions and makes sure they excel academically. She always keeps her centre creatively alive with artwork, craft, sewing, creative life skills and so much more, making sure there is never a dull moment for the children who attend the sessions.

Jannat is a creative youth peer leader from Protsahan’s alumni association of girl champions. She was trained at Photography at Protsahan for 6 years as a child and is now a full time photographer with us documenting our grassroot operations and work on an everyday basis at the child protection centres and beyond. She assists the senior child protection staff and social workers in the team with community mobilisation efforts during on ground programs as well. Before Protsahan, Jannat worked with Tania’s clay-art studio for a year where she was responsible for photo documentation and file management. She takes a massive interest in training younger girls at the centers now to encourage them into picking photography as a creative, vocational and dignified skill in life!

Mala is a girl champion and a youth peer leader at Protsahan India Foundation. She has worked on the pathbreaking film on Child Marriage with 27 other girls at Protsahan, that went on to win at the 7th BRICS International Film Festival in 2018. She currently assists Protsahan’s STEM classes at the slum digi-labs to bring more girls into the fold of technology learning. Reading up on child rights, paralegal work and gender equality really interests her. She has been a flagship addition to the Protsahan grassroot team and was a critical part of the team that carried out humanitarian relief work to support people with food security in highly impoverished communities.

Tarun is a dedicated child counsellor with a passion for integrating art therapy into his practice. Armed with a Master’s in Applied Psychology and a Post Graduate Diploma in Child Guidance and Counseling, Tarun brings a holistic approach to supporting young minds. He firmly believes in the innate capacity of individuals to heal themselves, and he strives to be a compassionate anchor on their journey. Alongside counselling, he finds joy in expressing himself through writing and poetry, and he is particularly drawn to the transformative power of art therapy.

Rehana heads Protsahan’s community mobilisation efforts in west Delhi slum communities and child protection work. Team Protsahan literally bumped into her during our extensive Covid-19 relief work all across some of the most impoverished spaces in Delhi. Rehana has been instrumental in bringing those children into the fold of classrooms and the school system who we found at begging points or at risk of trafficking. She is extremely empathetic and a ready-learner. When she got her first salary at Protsahan, she immediately moved to a better housing community and got tuition support for all her children. “I will bring hundreds and hundreds of girls who don’t have access to Education and Healthcare, into the folds of a dignified life by helping them get access to it.” Rehana, was married as a child bride but now is on a mission to not let any girl child be married unless she is physically and mentally ready and consents to it and certainly not before she has attained 21 years of age. Rehana is extremely compassionate with the girls, and sometimes the girls hug her and share their stories and seek counseling and support from her, which she beautifully helps them with.

Govind is Protsahan’s STEM and IT trainer who has done higher education in core subjects of Financial accounting, Cost accounting, Income tax and Advertising. He believes that there is no bigger and better spirit than the spirit of teamwork while working for a collectively conceived vision. He says that it gives him extreme happiness when a child just like him, achieves his or her dreams and flies on the path of living a life of dignity and respect.

Ruchika is the Administrative In-Charge of Protsahan. Apart from her administrative role, she’s also actively involved in teaching English Grammar to the Cocoon, Butterfly and Fairy batches at Protsahan. She makes sure that girls at Protsahan improve their spoken and written English, even if little-by-little each day.

Ruchika is extremely dedicated in her tasks and takes a keen interest in developing English Language for the girls through Scrabble, storytelling through YouTube videos, flash card games, and innovative everyday classroom interactions with her students.

Payal is our grassroots teacher for the “Caterpillar” batch, the youngest children at Protsahan in Uttam Nagar. Payal joined us in 2014, and has over the years emerged as one the most prolific social workers in the community fighting against child abuse. She coordinates with the community stakeholders like the Police and the families to ensure that a conducive and safe environment is provided to the children in the community, whether they are associated with Protsahan directly or indirectly.

Payal strongly believes in Protsahan’s way of teaching the children and reaching out to the community. She often brings her children to the center so that they can take part in the meditation, art classes, excursions and exhibitions, etc.

Since she joined Protsahan, Payal’s been trained in multiple facets of primary education that focus on empathy based teaching methods addressing children at risk of abuse, and often shadows the Founder in addressing and resolving cases of child abuse. Payal now runs the Digital & STEM Learning Center of Protsahan in the slums of Uttam Nagar.

A 30-year-old woman with a Master’s degree in History, Preeti’s professional journey started at Protsahan as a subject coach in 2013. Formally, she is Protsahan’s grassroots social worker and teacher, but over time has grown to be much more, to the extent that she led the running of Protsahan’s flagship Learning & Innovation Centre in the slums of Uttam Nagar in Delhi. Today, she is Head Manager-Ground Operations and oversees all the art and technology programmes for disadvantaged girls across Protsahan’s 5 centers across 65 slums reaching over 15,000 vulnerable adolescent girls.

Extremely calm and soft-spoken, to the untrained eye, Preeti is an extremely efficient and highly effective tough task-master who manages supervision of all our ground programs. Her commendable patience levels and gentle approach are a refreshing change for kids who are accustomed to violence, abuse and crime. These are exactly the attributes that make her so beloved to them.

With a willingness to learn everything new in art and tech spaces, the world is Preeti’s oyster and as she continues to climb ladders of success and growth, taking thousands of girls forward with her, she is excited to conquer many more peaks.

Charul is a seasoned nonprofit professional with over a decade of experience in trust-based philanthropy and the strategic design and implementation of community-based gender equity programs. She specializes in crafting interventions for young adults, focusing on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), employability enhancement, and gender equality.

Charul’s journey in the development sector began as a facilitator, transitioning from the for-profit sector to nonprofit work. Her expertise and commitment to gender justice and social inclusion drive her impactful work in the field. Her experience with a grant-making organisation along with her experience in the strategic design and implementation of programs have provided her with a holistic lens with which to approach her work.

A company secretary by profession and a writer by heart, Ms Jaswant Kaur switched to the Development sector after a decade of working in the corporate world. Her journey in this space began with Deepalaya, a Delhi-based NGO, where she got an opportunity to work for children, women, youth, elderly and adolescent boys and girls, raising funds while strategizing the growth of the organisation. To keep herself abreast with the legal provisions affecting women and children, she did a specialised course in child rights and child protection law from the National Law School of India University and a course in POSH law for preventing sexual harassment at workplace from the Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI).

After around seven years of her engagement with Deepalaya and a short stint with BITSAA Alumni Trust, an organisation founded by a few alumni of BITS Pilani for promoting community development in 66 villages surrounding Pilani, Ms Jaswant Kaur joined Protsahan India Foundation in June 2023 as Director Fundraising & growth strategy. A young leader, she is also on the board of VANI — an apex body of voluntary development organisations. Recently, the executive committee elected her as their treasurer. A feminist, she has been vocal about child rights and issues affecting women and girls. She regularly writes columns and Oped Articles for various newspapers and magazines. Her work in the sector, especially during the pandemic, has been recognised by several organisations. She has also been awarded for her writing skills.

Mukul is an independent Consultant and Advisor in Human Resources and the Social sector.  She brings with her strong background and expertise in both CSR and HR, with three decades of strategic and diverse experience.

Mukul has a Masters in Personnel Management & Industrial Relations from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and prior to venturing out on her own, held leadership positions across Business verticals of ITC Limited. She has managed Industrial Relations to Performance and Talent Management in HR and in CSR-led interventions pertaining to Women Empowerment, Health, Sanitation, Solid Waste Management, Education and Skilling, pan India. Her focus has been on enabling sustainability of interventions, driving strategic multi-stakeholder partnerships for large scale amplification and leading Impact Assessments, Research & Communication. Mukul believes in the power of an enabling culture, DEI and system driven transparency in creating a strong institution.

During the course of her career, Mukul has been a member of the HR Committee of Retailers Association of India, CII National Committee on Education and CII National Committee on Women Empowerment.  She has been a speaker/faculty at various forums including CII, FICCI, AIMA, NHRDN and at educational Institutions.

Mukul is also a qualified and practising Regression Therapist and in her spare time, an avid traveller.

Shefali is a firm believer in the power of stories.

Her body of work has a definite tilt towards women and gender issues. Born and brought up in Korba, Chhattisgarh, a graduate of Guru Ghasidas University Bilaspur, Shefali loves to experiment with audiovisual content formats.  Meanwhile, she has also kept her pen inked by writing columns and feature articles and columns for eminent newspapers and websites in India. 

Shefali has worked extensively in Social Behaviour Change Communications and C4D across Asia, working with communities, audiences and creatives to make the world better: supporting adolescent girls and boys in the Hindi heartland of India and the reproductive health of women of Bihar, Punjab and Madhya Pradesh to explore the information needs and strategizing and collaborating with Media and NGO partners to sharing life-saving information for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh; expanding the horizons of women involved in farming in Jharkhand to creating a content plan and training resources for young people facing conflict and Climate change issues in Indonesia to generate conversations through positive deviance stories in Afghanistan, Congo and Myanmar. Shefali believes in creating space for communities to tell their own stories and harnessing technology, research and a healthy dose of humility to make it work.

Shefali is one of the few broadcast professionals who proved their mettle with the National Broadcaster, All India Radio (FM, News & commentary), Private FM Stations (Red FM, Dhamaal 24 and Mirchi), Community Radios (trained programming teams of around 65 community radio stations) and Web Radio (Radio Hello Voters) and has created path-breaking work for communities with BBC media action for over a decade.

Winner of two eminent awards for outstanding radio production (both with and for Children); Namely the Laadli Media Awards 2012 & Rangkriti Award 2014, she has completed two decades of working on audio outputs for various platforms and now is doing more work tilted towards Humanitarian Emergency response, Communication strategies and community engagement planning on issues such as gender, children, health, Climate change, adolescent issues, media capacity building.

Brian established the South Australia chapter of the Australian India Business council in 2004, and was the first President and later the National Chairman of the AIBC. He has led eight business delegations to India with the Premier of South Australia and three Federal Government trade delegations, and has been involved over the last twelve years in building bilateral trade between Australia and India.

As National Chairman, he has chaired two Joint Business Council Meetings in Australia and India. In 2008 he was appointed the Premier of South Australia’s Special Envoy to India to develop bilateral trade and business ties between South Australian and Indian companies.

Brian has provided direct opportunities for networking for Protsahan and continues to build capacities through legal and international platforms that would become critical areas of fundraising in future for the organization.

Osama Manzar is a global leader on the mission of eradicating information poverty from India and the global South using digital tools through Digital Empowerment Foundation, an organisation he founded in 2002. A British Chevening Scholar and an International Visitors Leadership Program Fellow of the US State Department, Osama is a social entrepreneur, author, columnist, angel investor, mentor, and sits on several government and policy committees in India and outside working in the areas of Internet, access, and digital inclusion. Osama has instituted 10 awards for recognising digital innovations for development.

He is the strongest pillar of Protsahan’s advisory council and is always available with his networks for Protsahan’s founding team. He mentors Sonal and Jaswinder by strengthening systems of governance, finance with his vision to scale. Osama is a very active participant in Protsahan’s journey to scale and reach one million most vulnerable children in India.

Jaswinder Singh is a former Chief Editor of a magazine who later very passionately switched to the development sector after a 14-year career in journalism and public relations. At present, he works with Protsahan as Executive Director, directly overseeing the finance, compliance and data operations of the organization. He has written and designed a first-of-its-kind arts-based advocacy toolkit that highlights the global legal framework against child sexual abuse and has been instrumental in developing an illustrated storytelling books on child protection laws in various countries reaching out to more than 80,000 children so far.

Jaswinder often says, “Let us change our traditional attitude from mere data collection for evaluation to the construction of data-led programming on the ground, where design gets built in the programs from day one. Let’s humanize and democratize data with its ethics and integrity intact.” He has been influential in strengthening child protection systems at the heart of hyperlocal community interventions using data-led insights exactly where it makes most difference, even if not any noise. His silent passion for data, history, systems change and coaching colleagues at work, make him a very admired leader in the sector. Jas, as he is fondly called, deeply believes that the leaders the world needs in this time and place must be willing to give up things that make their existence comfortable. His focus is to cultivate talent through the route of long-term employee development plans that help create a sustainable learning organization in practice. “Valuing your people is the first step to creating an authentic impact,” he says. His calm leadership at Protsahan is instrumental in keeping the humor, culture and massive impact, intact at Protsahan. Over weekends, one can find Jas patiently baking bread as a form of mindfulness and playing with his dog Tishka as he prunes his garden.

Born in 1958, juggles three passions and one career. His passions are writing, rock climbing and spiritual evolution. After an organic chemistry degree, Kiran started his working life as a school teacher & house master in an experimental residential J Krishnamurti school in Varanasi. He started his career in advertising in 1983, as a copywriter in Lintas. He ended up being the CEO and Chief Creative Officer of Clarion advertising. In 1999, he co-founded Chlorophyll, a brand consultancy. Chlorophyll has differentiated over 400 brands and created over 50 brands from scratch. It has four IPs and its own innovation lab. Kiran was Chairman of the committee that consulted with UIDAI, the Government of India’s arm that developed Aadhaar, the world’s largest biometrics-based identity project. He is an online teacher: he designed and delivered the brand module for the Liverpool Business School + upGrad MBA in 2020. Kiran was the very first speaker at TED University at TED’s first Indian meet in 2009 and at TEDx Bandra in 2017.

He won the Indo-UK Short Story Writing award in 1995, has published three books of fiction, Halfway Up the Mountain, Two Pronouns and a Verb and Black River Run and read from them in London, Singapore, New York and Beijing. He facilitated the IFSC World Cup in Bouldering, a form of rock climbing, in NaviMumbai in 2016 and 2017: events that were voted the best in class in those two years by the global participants. This facilitated the inclusion of rock climbing in the Olympics in 2020/21. He is part of The Basalt Foundation, whose aim is to put an Indian climber on the Olympic podium by 2032.

Kiran has a species of spider named after him, Thelcticopis Kirankhalapi!

Sonal Kapoor is Founder CEO, Protsahan India Foundation – an organization based in New Delhi, India, that works on bridging the gap in childcare systems by introducing an empathy-based gender transformative system called the HEART model to heal childhood trauma and transform lives of children facing adversity, to reach their full potential. Her focus of work is adolescent girls (10-19 years). She is an esteemed Ashoka Fellow, Vital Voices Fellow & World Bank Fellow. She has pursued Child Protection Law from the National Law School of India University. Sonal has served as Member, Expert Committee on Anti-Child Trafficking (Delhi Commission of Women) and Member, CSO Coalition to End Child Marriage in India. Protsahan, under her leadership, has rescued over 1148 girls from violence and abuse and reaches out to more than 81,000 vulnerable adolescent girls every year in urban slums through Arts and STEM-based mainstreaming programs, so that they break cycles of violence and can be mainstreamed with education & financial independence. Protsahan worked tremendously to create sustainable care linkages for vulnerable covid orphans and covid widows by linking them with critical government benefits. Gender Transformative & Trauma-Informed Child Rights Policies, Integrated Child Protective Services and Strategic Social Media Communication for Nonprofits are her core areas of interest. She tweets at @ArtForCause.

More about Sonal’s work can be read here: https://www.ashoka.org/en/fellow/sonal-kapoor