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.

Deepti Khera

Passionate about bringing the voice of children to the forefront, Deepti has juggled many hats before she found her calling. Although trained in Social Communications Media from Sophia College, she believes the dots connected magically and brought her to Leher where she works as Communications Manager while also supporting programmatic work. Previously, she worked as a journalist for The Hindustan Times and Mumbai Mirror, before moving to the development sector. At Aangan Trust, she worked as a co-researcher on “What Happens after a Rescue” where she interviewed 98 girls in childcare institutions across Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh to understand the journey of an adolescent girl once she is rescued. She was also part of a group that monitored and evaluated childcare institutions in Delhi after an order that was passed by the High Court-appointed Committee. This gave her an opportunity to visit more than 90+ childcare institutions across the country, learn to activate government linkages, work with the District Child Protection Unit, and the police both at the community and institution level. Deepti had the honour of working on the documentary, Price of Free on child labour and slavery which went to win the Grand Jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and made a debut on Youtube. She also did a short assignment for Freedom Fund, looking at the safeguarding concerns on children at childcare institutions in Bihar. Deepti believes the medium is the message and she tries to render this lens to communications at Leher. She is interested in using social-emotional learning, participatory research and storytelling as a tool for social change for children. She is an ambassador and curator for Dream on India, India's first book of dreams co-authored by children.

Kajol (Devasmita) Menon, Co-Founder

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 is a development professional with over 14 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.

Kanika Prasad Gupta

Kanika is a trained social worker who has been working on child protection and rights of children for over three years. Additionally, she has a specialised Master’s degree in 'Child Rights and Child Protection'. She has worked with organisations such as Prerana and Childline. At Prerna, she was involved in the rehabilitation and protection of children found begging. Here she worked closely with children entering the Juvenile Justice System; she conducted social investigations, care plans and worked with relevant child protection stakeholders. She also conducted outreach and awareness programs as a preventive approach to child begging. At Childline, she worked in Bathinda as well as supported the Faridkot division by documenting case studies and conducting capacity building workshops. Kanika is empathetic, enthusiastic and always has a can-do attitude. .

Tasha Koshi

Tasha has been working in the child-rights sector for the past eight years. She has worked at the Planning Commission of India, where she developed papers on the economic crisis and its impact on gender, and trafficking. Her next stint was at CHILDLINE India Foundation (CIF), 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. In addition, Tasha developed a training module on handling cases of missing children for police academies across India with advice from UNICEF. She has represented CIF as well at the India Alliance for Child Rights (IACR) undertaking specific tasks to aid in the Alternate/ NGO reporting process in relation to the UNCRC. Tasha has also worked as a consultant with UNICEF, for whom she analysed sample child-protection Information-Education-Communication (IEC) material from across the country to identify present trends and gaps in communication on child protection issues. 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 committes across the country, in association with UNICEF. Tasha has a keen interest in research. She has been a part of Leher since its inception and is a founding member of our organisation. Tasha has been trained on participatory research and anchors Leher’s researchwork , which has recently completed baseline studies regarding child protection in six districts across four states and is part of development of Leher’s pilot preventive child-protection programme in Madhubani, Bihar. She has co-lead the development of a toolkit for conducting district-level child-protection baseline surveys. Tasha also worked on the Juvenile Justice Campaign—No Prison for Children,undertook data analysis to prepare content for a microsite dedicated to the campaign. Tasha represents Leher at national and civil-society consultations. Tasha also plays a key role in organization management and development at Leher.

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.