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.

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.

Archana Relan has over eighteen years of hands-on experience in program management, donor relations, multi-stakeholder administration, government liaison, capacity building and training & evaluation. Having worked with leading development sector organizations such as Tata Trusts, BASIX and BAIF; she has extensive domain knowledge of Agriculture & Agri-based livelihoods, Climate & Natural Resources and Women Empowerment. She is presently Grant Manager (Gender Justice) at Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiative.

Soumya is young neuroqueer development sector professional primarily interested in leveraging digital mediums to amplify marginalised voices, bridge existing gaps, promote inclusivity and accessibility. Their work and approaches are very much informed by their lived experiences. Building a community and fostering a sense of belongingness have been crucial in their work approach. Soumya is building a podcast—Atypical Dikkatein—to chronicle the stories of queer-disabled folx in India as these stories are often relegated to the margins.

Arpan Rai is a correspondent for British newspaper The Independent and is based out of India. She covers human rights issues and political affairs in Asia, especially the gender apartheid affecting millions of women and children in Afghanistan under the Taliban after the fall of Kabul. She has reported on several human rights atrocities in wars and conflict in Afghanistan, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Prior to this, she has worked with the digital arm of India’s leading daily Hindustan Times, news website The Quint and New Delhi’s only tabloid Mail Today, and covered gender issues, education rights and India’s federal administration.

Harshita Kaushal is a counselling psychologist who works with children, adolescents, young adults and families. She finished her Master’s in Counselling Psychology (with a specialization in Child and Adolescent Counselling) from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She also holds a Diploma in Narrative Therapy from The Dulwich Centre, Australia and Children First, India. She was a team-lead for ‘RAAHAT’, a national first aid counselling service  at Children First (India), responding to the mental health crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic. Harshita has been a consultant with Protsahan since 2021. She is interested in understanding how the organization uses community knowledges to create grassroots interventions that lend themselves to a trauma-informed lens. She is passionate about furthering her work by using community-based mental health models, which integrate developmental frameworks for children, adolescents and young adults. She hopes to create public health interventions that are both scientific and contextually relevant.

Nicole is a development professional with over 14 years of work in the sphere of child rights and protection. Passionate about the rights of children, Nicole joined the founding team of CHILDLINE India in 1999. She was instrumental in developing the service from a single helpline for street children in Mumbai to the largest helpline in India, embedded in the nation’s child protection system, now reaching one third of India’s children. As Deputy Director of CIF, Nicole managed the CHILDLINE network across the North and East of India, managed the relationship between CIF and the Government of India and led organizational plans and strategy development processes. Nicole has contributed significantly to research studies and projects on the protection of children including steering a national study on the status of child protection mechanisms across 10 states of India.

Angana is the Head – Gender and Social Inclusion at Project KHEL, Lucknow. A gamification expert, she designs interactive activity-based curricula to simplify messages for children and adolescents. Her ability to listen to young people, separating her perception from their lived experiences makes her an effective storyteller adept at amplifying the voices from the ground.

Avantika’s current role at Ashoka Innovators for the Public, India, includes Ashoka Fellow research and evaluation under the Venture & Fellowship arm. In her role, she digs deeper into different social ecosystems and with a diverse background, she brings an understanding of local cultures and cross-sectoral experience with non-profits, politicians, government officers, and PR.

Avantika is passionate about animal welfare and has been working on stray animal rescue in India since 2012. She is also passionate about working towards criminal justice. Beyond her external pursuits, Avantika is dedicated to understanding deeper perspectives of trauma, seeking ways to heal her own and contributing to the broader conversation around mental well-being.

She holds degrees in Animal Behaviour and Animal Welfare, Psychology, English Literature, and Economics.

Nimisha Srivastava is the Executive Director of Counsel to Secure Justice, an Indian non profit working on access to justice for child sexual abuse survivors and building restorative justice models for children and communities. She believes in bringing a compassionate and humane eye to the idea of justice, centering the rights of children on both sides of the justice system.

Sneha Singh, is a Child Rights Lawyer. She has been  practicing in the field of Criminal Litigation for a decade advocating  caused- based litigation and human rights violation. She has been on the panel for assessing the quality of legal -aid provided to Child-in Conflict with Law with Justice Lokur, formed by DCPCR and successfully  represented more than 50 Child-Victims of Sexual Abuse while upholding the Child-Rights sanctity.She represents Children at Juvenile Justice Boards & Children Court, at present in Delhi & other parts of India.

Liyi Marli Noshi is Practicing Advocate in Courts Delhi of India and NCR region, she has been working on the issues human rights, women and children rights for last 16 years. She has been working as support person to the victim of Pocso for last 9 years, south district, Saket District court. She was a Legal Consultant UN women to Department of Women and Child Development, Government of Delhi. She is also a external committee member for Sexual Harassment Committee to JREs Institute/ PWD department, Parliament house. She worked with Delhi Police in sensitizing the police force in the issue of Northeast India and also conducted training and awareness workshops in all the government schools in Delhi on the issue of Pocso/crime against women and children and racism.

Jyothi Ravichandran is the Programme Specialist for Mental Health and Psychosocial Support at the UNICEF India Country Office.

In her role, she supports advancement of a multisectoral MHPSS agenda, especially in Child Protection, Education and Health. Prior to her work in UNICEF, she was the Director of Curriculum Development in Social and Emotional Learning at LEAD, an ed tech organization and founded and directed the activities of Thrive Foundation, an educational nonprofit based in Chennai, working to promote whole school mental health in low-income schools.

Jyothi holds a Master’s Degree in Psychology (Clinical) from Christ University. She is a Young India Fellow and Acumen Fellow. She comes with a decade of experience working with children, adolescents, and adults in clinical, school, and community settings. She believes in the power of democratizing psychological expertise in communities and institutions to build the proverbial village for every child.

Shweta Sharma has been working as an elementary school teacher with Government of  Jharkhand for the last 18 years. On the lines of the popular slogan Ma, Mati, Manush, she believes that Mother and mother tongue, Mobile (learning resources) and Mobilization of alumni and community are the key to the achievement of learning outcomes, especially at the foundational stage. She is presently the key resource person for NIPUN Bharat Mission, Jharkhand.

She was awarded the National ICT Award 2019, and she was also awarded the Pramerica Spirit of Community International Award 2021 for exceptional initiative in service to the community.

Puja Marwaha, Chief Executive – Child Rights and You, believes that children are the very foundation of every nation’s growth and development aspirations. It was this belief that fuelled her passion for children’s rights and inspired her to become a full-fledged part of the social sector in 1994.

For the past 29 years, Puja has helped build an organizational framework for CRY that best captures the essence of justice and equity. Her work is focused on creation of an organizational character that attempts to foster a passion for children, a high degree of individual accountability to children and a belief in every person’s potential to bring change for children. She currently also serves on the board for VANI – Voluntary Action Network India – in an endeavour to strengthen public mobilization for social causes.

Puja is a TedEx speaker and serves on the academic advisory board of XIMB school of Sustainability.

Enakshi Ganguly is a development researcher, human rights activist and author working on issues of women, children, and other marginalized groups for four decades. She has worked with many organisations including being Deputy Director of Multiple Action Research Group for 10 years. She Co-Founded HAQ: Centre for Child Rights in 1998 and was its Co-Director till August 2018 and is currently Advisor of HAQ. Her expertise includes research, training and advocacy on issues concerning different marginalized groups including children, women, tribals, displaced persons and sexual minorities. She has been a member of drafting committees for laws and policies for the government including member of the Steering Committee of the Planning Commission for the Eleventh and Twelfth Five Year Plans as well invited as a technial expert by UN Agencies.

She is on the board of several organisations as well as on gender and child protection committees. These include the National Gender Centre of the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) (till 2021) and Child Rights International Network (CRIN). She is an Honorary Professor at the National Law University, Odisha (India).  She has recently been appointed Executive Director of the Housing and Land Rights Network. In 2003 she was awarded the Ashoka Fellowship.