Speakers

• Bharti Ali Child Rights Defender and Expert
  

  Bharti Ali

  Child Rights Defender and Expert

  Bharti Ali is a Child Rights Defender and Expert, who has been advocating for the rights of children for over three decades. Bharti’s journey in the development and han rights sector started soon after she completed her Masters in Sociology from Jamia Millia Islamia in 1992. She started with working on issues concerning rehabilitation and resettlement of persons displaced by development projects, only to realise that children received no attention in the larger development agenda. Gradually, she started focussing on child rights within the development sector through research and advocacy. This led to another realisation that advocacy for change is only possible when the duty bearers have the capacity to deliver on the laws, policies and programmes meant for children. She has since been focussing on strengthening the capacities of key duty bearers through trainings and development of training curriculum as well as through strengthening the law and policy framework for children’s rights.

• Jeroo Billimoria Social Entrepreneur
  

  Jeroo Billimoria

  Social Entrepreneur

  Jeroo Billimoria is an Indian social entrepreneur and the founder of several international NGOs. Her work has been featured in several books.Her most recent initiatives include Child and Youth Finance International (CYFI), which Jeroo founded in 2011, Aflatoun (Child Savings International), Childline India Foundation and Child Helpline International. Her most recent initiative is Catalyst 2030.

  Billimoria was born in Bombay, India to an accountant and a social worker. Raised in a family strongly committed to social service, her father’s early death caused her to dedicate herself to social causes. Billimoria received a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Mumbai (formerly the University of Bombay) in 1986, an M.A. in Social Work from India’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences in 1988 and an M.S. in Non-Profit Management from The New School for Social Research in New York City in 1992. From 1991 to 1999, she was a professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

• Kabir Vajpayee Co-Founder, Vinyas
  

  Kabir Vajpayee

  Co-Founder, Vinyas

  Kabir Vajpayee, social entrepreneur and co-founder of Vinyas, has created a framework to creatively treat space and its built elements and make school architecture more conducive to child development. He has initiated the concept of Whole School Development Planning, which is now in the framework for implementation for Elementary Education and is expected to influence more than thirteen lakh primary and elementary schools across the country in next few years. By convincing State Governments to invest in his idea, he has created an effective delivery mechanism that brings engineers, teachers and architects together to implement and spread his idea to rural government schools. Kabir is also Advisor Infrastructure for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India. He has advised us on the design and development of the Nourishing Schools toolkit.

• Rajesh Bhat Founder, Swapath Trust
  

  Rajesh Bhat

  Founder, Swapath Trust

  Rajesh Bhat is in the social development sector for over thirty-five years now. He was leading the Ahmedabad Study Action Group (ASAG) for 23 years and now is associated with The AWARE Foundation and the Swapath Trust.

  His areas of interest and experience are:
  • Multi-pronged rural poverty alleviation with microfinance as its nucleus
  • Education and rehabilitation of vulnerable children
  • Panchayati Raj as a change agent in rural areas
  • Community-based disaster management.
  He looks at social problems holistically and believes in strategies that involve people as stakeholders and believes in building people’s capacities as part of the process. He believes in mutually strengthening action with research and vice-versa. He has worked at the grassroots all his career but also enjoys teaching and sharing his experience with students and interns. He has taught as a visiting faculty for nine years at the Human Geography Department of Basel University in Switzerland apart from teaching at some Indian colleges and Universities. He is a nature lover and a photographer with a deep interest in Gujarati literature.

  He has deep interest in Gujarati literature and used to write poetry and essays. He also is a keen photographer with love for nature. His academic background being associated with natural sciences, he has a lot of experience of nature education for children.