John Samuel has around 25 years of experience and expertise in strengthening democratic governance, public policy advocacy, human rights and sustainable development in India and globally. His work has combined policy research, advocacy capacity building, institution building, strategic leadership and social mobilization across the world. He is an International Consulting Advisor to the UNDP and other international development organisations. He helped to establish NCAS and was formerly the Executive Director here.
Jagadananda presently leads the Centre for Youth and Social Development (CYSD). He demitted the office as the State Information Commissioner, Odisha to advance the Right to Information (RTI) agenda in the State in August 2013 and was a member of the State Planning Board of Odisha, following his active campaigning for people-centric decentralized planning. He is also the President of the National Social Watch (NSW). In 2008, he was a Member of the Committee on State Agrarian Relations and the Unfinished Task in Land Reforms.
Keerti is the State Programme Coordinator of Mahila Samakhya, Bihar. She is a women and Dalit rights activist, development professional and trainer and has been involved in advocacy, research and training on a wide range of socio-legal issues such as domestic violence, sexual harassment at work place, adverse sex-ratio, Panchayati Raj, PESA, FRA, MNREGA, Right to Education, Child Rights, etc. for the last fifteen years.
Asha Ramesh is a gender and development activist. She has held a number of prestigious positions, such as Director, Policy and Partnerships with WaterAid, Senior Programme Officer Christian Aid, New Delhi, Director- Rights Based Programmes, Centre for World Solidarity, Hyderabad and Research Associate, National Institute of Advanced Studies, a premier Research Institution in Bangalore. She was the National Co-ordinator for National Alliance of Women (NAWO), New Delhi.
Advaita Marathe is a Gender and Women’s Rights Consultant and Trainer who was trained as a lawyer. She was initiated into the development sector with a desire to use law for social change. The focus of her work has always been women’s rights and gender across various sectors and has accumulated experience of working from the grassroots to national level on various issues affecting women.
Amitabh Behar is currently the Executive Director of the National Foundation for India (NFI). He is also the Global Co-chair of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty and the National Convener of the Social Watch Coalition India. Amitabh was earlier the Executive Director of NCAS. He works on advocacy, networking, coalition building and campaigning, particularly on issues of governance and civil society from the perspective rights and justice.
In 1995 Bhanwarji initiated a movement for rights on forestland in Udaipur region of South Rajasthan. 25000 tribals have been associated with this movement and have been continuously struggling since 1977 for entitlements of rights (food, land, health, education) . He has served the community by organizing them on issues of livelihood, justice, survival and the right to live with dignity. Special focus of his work has been lobbying, advocacy, networking, planning of issue based campaigns, promoting collective leadership.
Satya Babu received his M.A. in Sociology before forming ‘Literary Meet’, a forum for young writers in Anantapur and publishing 18 books on Telugu writings. He helped form Andhra Pradesh Vyvasaya Cooleela Samakhya and is the Director of the Centre for Rural Studies and Development, an organization working on issues of dalit, women, land, labour, drought, and NREGS in Andhra Pradesh.
Enakshi is a human rights activist, development researcher and trainer who has been involved in research, advocacy and training, nationally and internationally, on a wide range of socio-legal issues such as development-induced displacement, housing rights, unorganized labour and issues concerning women and children. Since co-founding HAQ: Centre for Child Rights, New Delhi, in 1998, she has been working in focused manner on children’s rights.