Meet the team
- Archana Dwivedi, Director
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Archana has more than 18 years of work experience in the areas of gender and education. In Nirantar, along with steering the organisational projects, her major involvement has been in researching and writing on issues of women’s empowerment and young people’s education and empowerment from a feminist perspective. Her engagement on these issues has further been strengthened by the work at the field level with women and girls belonging to marginalised communities. She believes in making research accessible to grass roots organisations and thus transcreates these researches into training and learning material for facilitators, field-based activists and organisations.
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- Ajay Singh, Team Leader (Accounts)
- Ajay handles overall accounts in the organization since last 11 years as Accounts Coordinator. He monitors and maintains the project budgets, books of accounts, audit preparations, legal compliances, and field accounts.
- Prasanna V.T., Team Leader (Administration)
- Prasanna has been working with Nirantar last 15 years as Administration Co-ordinator. She mainly regularizes and maintains all systems related to staff functioning and maintenance of office procedures, publications, and important documents. She also works closely with all the teams in coordinating all administrative work and logistics for trainings and events.
- Anil Hasda, Team Member
- Anil has been working with Nirantar last 20 years, and mainly handles field work, publication dissemination, maintaining stationary, Hindi typing, and overall office maintenance.
- Nishi Khandelwal, Team Leader
Nishi did her post-graduation in Biological Science, PG diploma in Guidance and Counselling from NCERT (New Delhi), and MBA with specialization in Human Resource Management. Overall, she has around 13 years of professional experience in working with women empowerment, education, and health. She heads the Women’s Literacy, Education, and Empowerment work in Nirantar, under which she plays a crucial role in planning the project operations, conducts trainings of the project staff and teachers of partner organizations, and is involved in the other organisational trainings conducted by Nirantar.
- Anita Singh, Team Member
- Anita has been a part of Nirantar since 2011, prior to which she was working with UNDP- Partner organization for CWWA under adult women's functional literacy project. She has done her Masters in Social Work, Rural Development. She is involved in the programme trainings including planning and logistic support. She also conducts the follow up field visits and documentation as part of the team's work with their partner organisation in various parts of the country.
- Purnima Gupta Programme Director
- Purnima is a Feminist and Women’s Right Activist. Since 1998. She has been working with Nirantar Trust since 1998. Since 2002, she has been responsible for setting up Nirantar’s community level work (Sahjnai Shiksha Kendra, Lalitpur, UP) on women’s education and women’s empowerment.
May 2008 to 2011, she has set up an eight month residential school for women and adolescent girls - “Janishala”, Lalitpur. It has been envisaged as an institutional learning space for women and adolescent girls who have either dropped out of school or have had very limited opportunities for education. 2011 to 2014 coordinated Women’s literacy work at Nirantar. Worked with more then 30 organisations across the country which includes intensive capacity building, through trainings and follow-up support for community-based partner organisations to enable them to design and implement women’s literacy programmes. January 2015 to August 2018, she was a senior fellow in Nirantar.
Presently she is a Programme Director of the Women's Literacy and empowerment work in Nirantar.
In 2016 to 2017, she has also conducted a year long course with Madhavi Kukreja on "Feminist Leadership Programme" for emerging new grassroots feminist leaders. She has done several training's on Gender, Education, Caste and Sexuality to Govt and non-Govt organisations. Developed teaching learning materials for adult literacy programme and documented some of the grassroots programme.. She has also expertise in review and evaluation, research and advocacy.She is one of the founder member of Sahjani Shiksha Kendra and Nazariya FoundationPurnima has done masters in clinical psychology from BHU (UP).
- Prarthana Thakur, Team Leader
Prarthana completed her M.S.W from Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi. After working for more than 4 years in the field education and literacy, she is currently coordinating the Delhi-based learning centres for adolescent girls, working closely with CBOs and teachers involved. She manages various types of centre activities like historical walks, theatre sessions and thematic workshops for girls. She is also actively involved in developing learning resource materials and booklets for young learners. Along with this, she is a part of organisational capacity building team and conducts trainings/workshops for teachers and facilitators on gender, education and innovative teaching–learning methods.
- Kavya Mohta Team Member
- Kavya completed her B.A. (Hons) in History from Delhi University and is a Young India Fellow, Batch of 2019, Ashoka University. She has experience working part-time with drop-out and never enrolled girls in a KGBV. At Nirantar, she works with adolescent girls and assists in coordinating the PACE centres. She is involved in work related to the PACE Alumni body, dissemination work, conducting demo sessions in the centres on themes such as History, and advocacy work for Young Peoples' Education. Additionally, she also assists the social media team in their work.
- Nandini Das Team Member
- Nandini has completed her Masters in Development and Labour Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. She has previously worked in the areas of advocacy and research, primarily working with informal labour like sanitation workers, waste pickers and home based garment workers. At Nirantar, she is part of the Gender and Sexuality team and is involved in trainings, advocacy on young people's education, designing and coordinating the institutional Yuva, Yaunikta aur Adhikar course and in conducting research, especially around LGBTQIA+ issues.
- Sadia Saeed, Team Leader
Sadia is a Post Graduate in Library and Information Science and joined Nirantar as a Librarian. She gradually started handling and overseeing the organisational publication work and material creation. Now, she heads the Publications and Communication work, working closely with all the programme teams, and does writing, editing, translation, proofreading and designing for Nirantar publications, social media, and organisational documents.
