Who We Are

The Leher Tale

Sheila’s hair was pulled out in clumps because dinner was brought to the table late. Little Lakshmi cried herself to sleep every night after being abused by her grandfather. Raju, in a fit of rage, accidently killed his drunk, violent father.

With over a decade and a half in developing India’s national emergency response service for vulnerable children, the founders of Leher listened to such heart-breaking stories for several years.

With an increasing awareness of the importance of a preventive approach to child protection, they are convinced that now is the time to shift the focus from intervention to prevention. The time is ripe to find solutions that prevent such abuse and violations in the first place.

So, in January 2013, they launched Leher.

Kajol (Devasmita) Menon, President

With a career span of 30 years in teaching, media, communications and development, Kajol is committed to issues of marginalized communities, justice and equity, particularly children and their rights. As Executive Director CHILDLINE India Foundation (CIF), she spearheaded India’s helpline for children into one of the largest child protection networks in the country. With the ambitious aim of expanding CHILDLINE to every district in India, she has managed the CHILDLINE network of over 450 civil society organizations, lead a team of 100 personnel at CIF and built national and global relationships with government, funding agencies, civil society and other strategic partners to increasing the public’s understanding of and engagement with child rights. Kajol is particularly passionate about scaling-up into replicable models and adapting technology to make child rights real.

Nicole Menezes, Co-Founder

Nicole Menezes , a trainer Social Worker is a development professional with 23 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. Leading the Program Development and Research Operations vertical, she has been responsible for the design, management of the Madhubani Community Led CP field experiment; ensuring the completion of CP baseline studies in eight districts across four states; building the capacity of stakeholders on child protection; design and capacity building of field teams to work with children, in UNICEF’s pilot initiative of 20 CFS centres in 2 districts of Kashmir reaching 400 children scale; ideation, design and management and development of numerous toolkits – to conduct CP Baseline, for organizing CPCs for Mahatashtra, to guide VCPCs during & post pandemic etc. She also represents the organisation at various national and regional platforms

Kanika Prasad Gupta

Kanika Prasad Gupta is a trained social worker who has been working on child protection and rights of children for over 5 years. Armed with a specialized Master’s degree in 'Child Rights and Child Protection', she has honed her skills at esteemed organizations like Prerana and Childline. At Prerana, she focused on rehabilitating children found begging, preparing social investigation reports, care plans, and outreach programs as a preventive approach to child begging. At Childline, she worked in Bathinda and supported the Faridkot division with case studies and capacity-building workshops.
At Leher, Kanika is responsible for building the capacity of the field teams to implement a Community-led preventive child protection initiative across districts in Odisha, Bihar, and Telangana. In addition, she channels her expertise into conducting rigorous desk research for reports and plays a pivotal role in the design of field tools for effective implementation. .

Tasha Koshi

Tasha Koshi has a Masters in Social Work and has been working in the child-rights sector for the past 14 years. Beginning at the Planning Commission of India, she went on to work at CHILDLINE India Foundation, where she was the key researcher for the ‘Everywhere Child Project’, a nation-wide baseline study on the status of child-protection mechanisms covering ten Indian states. As a former UNICEF consultant, she developed a child-protection framework and analysed related information, education and communication material used across India. In addition, she documented and analysed the work of village-level child protection committees across nine states, to frame strategies to guide the formation of child protection committees across the country for UNICEF. As a consultant for India Alternative Care Network, she developed a Compendium on emerging child care practices in India to inform on interventions in this field.
Tasha has been a part of Leher since its inception and is a founding member of the organisation. She is keenly interested and trained in participatory research. She anchors Leher’s research work- notably, having completed baseline studies regarding child protection in eight districts across four Indian states. She has helped develop Leher’s pilot preventive child-protection programme in Madhubani, Bihar being and has co-led the development of - a toolkit for conducting district-level child-protection baseline assessment; a MIS software (mobile application) to document village-level data, a foundational audio-visual toolkit to guide setting up Village Child Protection Committees in Maharashtra. She also plays a key role in organization management and development at Leher.

Deborah Patel

Deborah Patel is a development professional with over 8 years of experience in the child-rights sector. Prior to joining Leher, Deborah worked with children in the criminal justice system in Delhi providing trauma informed care and restorative process to children harmed by sexual violence and children in conflict with law. She holds a Master in Social Work with a specialisation in Criminology and Justice. Additionally, she is a trained restorative justice practitioner. At Leher she has been involved in documenting Leher's work across the country as well as module building, training and supporting other programmatic work

Krishna Kumar Tripathy

Krishna Kumar Tripathy has more than 30 years of experience in the development sector, especially in the field of Instruction design, facilitation of training programs, and development & management of alliances for the protection and promotion of children’s rights. He has worked with Butterflies (a child rights organization) for 25 years in various capacities including Head -Street Children’s Program, Head-Alliance Building & Head-Children’s Media Center. He was a senior consultant at the Centre for Child Protection-Sardar Patel University of Police, Security, and Criminal Justice-Jaipur. He has also worked as a consultant for many organizations which includes Médecins Sans Frontières, Miracle Foundation India, Campaign Against Child Labour, Kindernothilfe (Germany), and Tdh-Germany. He has co-facilitated the formation of National & International level forms of Children and NGOs for ensuring children’s right to participate in the matters concerning them. He has been invited by various national -International organizations to facilitate training programs on child rights issues. He is a Master of Sociology and Master of Social Work.

Seema Konale

Seema Konale, is a social work professional who has been working in social sector since last 22 years. She started her journey in the sector in 2001 with Balprafulta- A child rights organization for a project CHILDLINE-1098-Helpline for children in distress. She has a Masters in Social work (MSW) and MBA in Social Entrepreneurship form NMIMS, Mumbai. She has written a Research Paper on- Parents’ Attitude towards Problems of Intellectually disabled children”, 2019. As a State In-charge for CHILDLINE, she has executed and led the Maharashtra and Goa state programs/activities, trained district and block level officials on ending child marriages in Maharashtra, Coordinated the “Violence Against Children” campaign by Maharashtra State Police Department, Education department, UNICEF and CHILDLINE. Along with this, Seema conducted training on CSA and POCSO Act for Heads and Teachers under NISHTHA initiative by MHRD Department. At Leher, Seema is the State-lead responsible for managing the Community-led child protection work being facilitated across Maharashtra.

NAWSHIR H. MIRZA, Board Member

Nawshir is an independent director on the board of Thermax Ltd. Since 1999 he has served on the boards of various companies including in the Tata Group, Mphasis and Exide.

Since 2003 Nawshir has been involved in the movement for improved governance in the corporate sector.

Nawshir is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. He was with S.R.Batliboi & Co./Ernst & Young, from 1967 till his (early) retirement in April 2003, in its Calcutta and Mumbai offices. He also worked in the London office.

Nawshir was the India head of Jardine Matheson Ltd. for over ten years after retiring from the profession, during which time he also served on boards of some other companies and charities.

Nawshir has contributed to the governance and accounting professions, being a speaker or the chair at conferences in India & abroad and authoring several professional publications. He has chaired and served on the boards of various professional bodies and chambers of commerce.

He strongly believes in humankind taking responsibility for the destruction of the natural world. Nawshir is also on the board of The Energy Resources Institute (TERI) amongst other NGO’s.

Madhusudan Menon, Board Member

Madhu is a Chartered Accountant with over 23 years in banking, initially with the Reserve Bank of India and then with American Express Bank where he was Senior Director, responsible for Commercial Banking and Capital Market activities in India. Since leaving AEB in 2002, he has been an advisor to various business groups in India as a wealth management and capital market specialist. He has a keen interest in using commercially viable business models to stimulate and sustain social change.

He is currently the Chairperson at Micro Housing Finance Corporation (MHFC).

Abhiroop Mukhopadyay, Board Member

With a Ph.D in Economics from The Pennsylvania State University, USA, Abhiroop’s primary specialization is in Micro-Econometric methods applied to topics relating to Health, Education and Labour in developing countries (particularly India). His recent research is on the economic effects of HIV-AIDS and cancer, the impact of better school infrastructure on rural schooling attendance and changes in Intra-Household allocation of labour due to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

Currently, Abhiroop is an Associate Professor, Economics & Planning Unit, at the Indian Statistical Institute in Delhi

Pradeep Narayan, Board Member

Pradeep is a human rights and social development researcher. He has over 17 years of experience working in different capacities with leading government and non-government organizations in India, including CEC, CHILDLINE, CRY, Global March Against Child Labour, Save The Children, Plan, ActionAid, Magic Bus and other child protection and development organisations. He is involved in a number of projects on participatory monitoring and evaluation, policy advocacy, participatory research and capacity building across various sectors in India, South Asia and Africa.

Presently, Pradeep Narayanan is Director, Research and Consultancies, at Praxis Institute for Participatory Practices in Delhi.

Nilima Mehta, Board Member

Dr. Nilima Mehta has a masters degree in social work and a doctorate in sociology. She has done extensive work on the subject of child rights, child protection, family strengthening and non institutional alternative care like adoption, foster care and family counselling. Dr. Mehta was the chairperson of the first Child Welfare Committee (CWC) in Mumbai, constituted under the Juvenile Justice (care and protection) Act, 2000. She has been a consultant to several organizations like Unicef, CRY, Childline India Foundation, ICSW, Indian Council for Child Welfare (ICCW), CCW, IAPA, Family Service Centre (FSC) and Vatsalya Foundation. Dr. Mehta has been associated with the state and central government and the Planning Commission for policy development, training, research and review of national legislation concerning children. She was the Chairperson of the Central Adoption Regulation Agency (CARA) training and development committee.

Dr. Mehta has been a Chair Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and is a visiting professor at the Bombay University, and SNDT. She authored Ours By Choice - Parenting through Adoption, and Juvenile Justice System in India and Child Protection.

Vikas Srivastava, Board Member

Vikas is a Senior Partner with Luthra & Luthra Law Offices. He heads the Tax Practice of the firm, and has over 29 years’ experience in the area of Corporate Taxation, domestic as well as international. He has been ranked among the ‘Leaders in their Field: Tax’ by Chambers & Partners - Asia 2012. He strongly believes in equitable access to legal aid across all sections of the society, and in his capacity as a Senior Partner at Luthra & Luthra Law Offices, he has provided pro bono legal advice to several charitable institutions. He is also on the Board of Central Square Foundation, which is a philanthropy fund focused on improving the educational outcomes for low-income children in India.

May We Suggest?

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