About Us - Gyan Prakash Foundation

Vision

Value and recognise the human potential to learn.

Mission

To enable systemic change in education with a focus on developing capabilities to become lifelong learners.

Gyan Prakash Foundation (GPF) is a non-Profit organization working with rural government schools in India and initiating a transition to competency based education. Since its inception in 2011, it has adopted a collaborative approach with the Government and other organizations to develop a scalable and sustainable model to improve quality of learning in Government schools. GPF offers knowledge support to other organizations in their work to enable systemic transformation in education.

Belief

Dignity signifies the belief that everyone has potential and adds value in their own way. Giving respect to every stakeholder: child, teacher and parent by understanding their perspectives & strengthening structures for their participation is fundamental to GPF’s work.

Every person, no matter who they are, deserves the best edu-cation. It is important to address each person individually to be able to support them in their learning journey.

Respecting the individual in every child

We recognise that every person is unique with their own mix of com-petencies, capabilities,
emotional intelligence, points of
vIew etc.

Our focus is on children because we believe this is a critical period in a person’s life that can decide his or her future.

Our Journey

2012 - 2014

Discovery Phase

Set up Learning Labs within rural schools working directly with students on school readiness capabilities.

2012 - 2014

2014 - 2018

Development Phase

Innovation

Introduced data-driven lesson planning to align teacher practices and student needs

Stakeholder ownership
Activated a platform within the system for collaborative learning amongst teachers.

Strengthened community ownership by engaging parents in their child’s learning progress

2014 - 2018

2019 - Current

Operating Phase

Leveraging technology to bring real time data on student learning to all stakeholders.

Institutionalizing Stakeholder Ownership.
Building a Navigated Learning Collaborative

2019 - Current

Board of Trustees

Daljit Mirchandani

Founder and Managing Trustee

With a career spanning 40 years in the corporate world, for Founder member and Managing Trustee, Daljit Mirchandani, building Gyan Prakash Foundation was to ensure a new dawn in rural India in the space of rural Elementary Education. Mr. Mirchandani retired in 2010 as the Chairman of Ingersoll-Rand (India) Ltd. At present he is on the Advisory and Statutory Board of various Indian and MNC companies in the field of bio fuels, water and waste water, infrastructure development, infrastructure finance, Auto Components and Energy Management.

Sreeja

Managing Trustee

Chief functionary and Secretary of the India Education Collective; founding member and Chief Functionary/Secretary 2000-11, of Prajayatna, a national level organisation focusing on systemic issues of education reform; COO of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation from 2011-2013 and later Secretary-CEO from 2013-15.

Zakiya Kurrien

Trustee

Zakiya Kurrien is the Co-founder, Director Emerita and Co-chairperson of the Governing Council of Centre For Learning Resources (CLR). She has an MA in Education from Smith College, USA. Her professional work over three decades spans multiple areas in the development and education of marginalised children, including the designing of interventions, capacity-building programmes and a wide range of materials for Early Child Care, Preschool Education, Foundational Literacy and Numeracy and the Teaching of English in multilingual contexts. She has served on national and state-level committees related to educational policy, and provided consultancy to international organisations and Indian NGOs. At present she serves on the National ECCE Task Force set up by the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

Advisory Members

Deepak Satwalekar

Deepak Satwalekar, an MBA from The American University, Washington D.C. is at present a member on the Board of Indian Institute for Human Settlements. He retired as the Managing Director and CEO of HDFC Standard Life Insurance Co. Ltd. He has been the Managing Director of Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC), a consultant with esteemed organizations like the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Rajeev Gupta

Rajeev Gupta’s career spans 30 glorious years across Manufacturing, Investment Banking and Private Equity. He has been Global partner of The Carlyle Group & India head of Asia Buyout Fund. He was the M&A Head and Board member of DSP Merrill Lynch. At present, he is on the Board of various companies including EIH, TVS Capital and VIP Industries.

Badri Agarwal

Badri Agarwal is currently a Trustee and Board Member of Bharti Foundation. He has served as Corporate Director and CEO of Bharti Enterprises. He was with The Eicher Group for 20 years, where he was Managing Director of Group Holding Company, Director Finance and Managing Director of Royal Enfield Motors Ltd. A Chartered Accountant, he has attained valuable experience in various fields and as Director in various companies over the last four decades.

Shridhar Shukla

Dr. Shridhar Shukla’s experience spans a broad spectrum – ranging from research and academia to technology development, corporate leadership and entrepreneurship. He is a co-founder of kPoint Technologies, a company incubated at GS Lab, also co-founded by him. kPoint offers a SaaS video engagement platform for businesses and GS Lab offers software product engineering services. He has served as a whole-time Director and Chief Operating Officer at Persistent Systems.

Shridhar is a B.Tech. EE (1983 IIT Bombay), M.S. EE (Virginia Tech) and a Ph.D. ECE (North Carolina State University). He is a Distinguished Service Award recipient of IIT Bombay, and has served as a Chairman of the IITB Alumni Association.

After recently completing his corporate career, Shridhar now spends his time on two areas – digital trust technology and bringing teacher-centricity back in schools – which he believes are fundamental to societal and national well-being.