VIDYA founder-president Rashmi Misra: “educate, empower, transform”

Rashmi Misra is founder-president of Vidya Integrated Development for Youth and Adults (VIDYA, estb.1985), an NGO providing education and skills training to 200,000 underprivileged children and adults in 14 cities including New Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai and Bengaluru. It also runs the CBSE-affiliated VIDYA School, Gurugram (estb.2009) that provides free-of-charge English-medium K-12 education to 1,100 children from low-income households.

Newspeg. On November 23, VIDYA South Zone held a Town Hall event in Bangalore to mark 15 years of impactful service. Earlier, on November 13, VIDYA West Zone celebrated 25 years of service since its establishment at IIT-Bombay in 2000.

History. A history postgraduate of Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi, trained Odissi dancer and a former administrator at the Austrian Embassy in New Delhi, Misra taught German at the Modern School, Vasant Vihar, for over a decade before promoting VIDYA in 1985 in her home at IIT-Delhi, where her husband Dr. Ashok Misra was a professor. “I witnessed children playing in a sewage pool near the IIT-Delhi campus and was struck by the deep inequality of the education system. I invited the five girls playing there to my home for tutoring. That’s how VIDYA began. Subsequently, I started conducting informal classes for children from nearby slums with the help of volunteers,” recalls Misra.

Beginning with teaching five children at home, Misra has painstakingly nurtured and developed VIDYA into an influential and impactful pan-India NGO. Currently, VIDYA has 400 full-time employees and over 900 volunteers working on 300 projects countrywide directly impacting 8 lakh children in nine states.

VIDYA’s initiatives are mapped to the three main sub-themes of Prime Minister Modi’s Viksit Bharat (developed India) goal set for 2047 — “education for all; environment sustainability; and innovation, science and technology”. Major projects include the Bal Vihar Primary School in Delhi; VIDYA School, Gurugram, NIOS bridge programmes, scholarship schemes; women empowerment and community development programmes, and digital literacy for children, youth and women.

Direct talk. “Our objective is to ‘educate, empower and transform’ children, youth and women. Our flagship project — the VIDYA School, Gurugram — has transformed the lives of over 5,000 children by providing them high-quality English-medium education. Several of our alumni have gone into higher education at the IITs, IIMs and are employed with leading multinational companies. Moreover, our Digital Empowerment Program, under which we run 150 centres nationwide, has been transformative for underprivileged women and youth. It has become a cornerstone of our mission, bridging the digital divide and creating pathways to employment and entrepreneurship,” says Misra.

Contributing generously for transformational growth are VIDYA’s major donors (annual budget: Rs.20 crore) who include BOSCH, HDFC Credila, Barclays, Starbucks Foundation, and Canara Bank. With their funding and enablement VIDYA is all set to establish a Rs.26 crore Discovery and Innovation Hub currently under construction on its school campus in Gurugram. Spanning over 80,000 sq. ft across five floors, the hub will host STEAM and Tinkering labs, Digital and Resource Center, Start-up & Freelance Incubator, and dedicated spaces for women to acquire vocational skills and showcase their businesses.

Future plans. Even as the Hub is scheduled to be ready by 2027, Misra has drawn up ambitious plans to upgrade VIDYA’s other programmes. “We plan to scale our projects to reach 1 million beneficiaries over the next five years. As India progresses towards attaining the Viksit Bharat 2047 goal, we are committed to contributing towards this objective by empowering underserved communities through education, skills training and holistic development which are essential prerequisites,” says this extraordinary educationist.

May your tribe increase!

Summiya Yasmeen (Bengaluru)