SCHOOL OF THOUGHT

BINU VERMA set up NGO Bal Utsav with her husband to benefit children’s education in 2009. oday, in the wake of the pandemic, its disaster response programme has benefitted many, even as its primary focus on education remains intact.

- Shraddha Kamdar

When Binu Verma and Ramesh Balasundaram were courting over a decade ago, both corporate professionals discovered their shared passion for developing solutions that would have an impact at the grassroots level. In 2009, the year that they got married, they also bid adieu to their cushy jobs to set up Bal Utsav, with the mission to empower children and have them work towards a better future. It was not a spur-of-the-moment plunge, but rather a well-thought-out move after a careful study of the school education space in India.

Over the years, they developed many unique programmes for children to learn key concepts, and created ‘bridge schools’ for children who were forced to drop out of school due to difficult circumstances. Gradually, with a mission to make a larger difference, they started adopting government schools in Karnataka to bring about a holistic reformation in over 200 schools.

Over the period of transformation, they decided to set up a disaster response programme called Operation Dayitva (responsibility) to respond to children and families affected by disasters. The team was able to respond to the 2015 Nepal earthquake, the 2015 floods in Chennai and Cuddalore, the 2018 floods in Kerala, and the 2019 floods in Karnataka and Kerala. In fact, the crisis response and management framework developed by Bal Utsav is today used by various organisations nationally.