Daring To Dream Big

Neelam Makhijani is putting her head and heart into Childfund India to make India a better place for underprivileged children

- Rahul Paul

A Delhi girl at heart, Neelam Makhijani started off as a journalist in New York writing on South Asian political issues for eight years, only to come back and work with HelpAge Asia. “They were looking for a communication director and I applied as being a journalist it comes naturally to me. I didn’t get the job as I was returning to India after a long time and had not worked here as a journalist. Instead, they offered me the job of fundraising which was very new to me. But, I took it, as I liked the work the organisation was doing,” she remembers.

Within a period of few months, Neelam was doing both the jobs—fund raising and communication. The bosses were happy and she was eventually promoted to regional director in just a year. “I loved that work, and at once knew I couldn’t work for any other sector,” she asserts. Neelima was transferred to HelpAge UK in 2000 where she worked for many other organisations for 15 years. When she returned in 2014, owing to her mother’s illness, she fell into the laps of Childfund India and that changed both their destinies.

Childfund India is a non-government organisation that works for the development of unprivileged children by improving the environment around them in terms of education, safety, cleanliness and financial stability, among others. Childfund India has many flagship programmes like Building Basic Skills, under which parents, communities and teachers participate in the child’s learning, and the Community Based Learning Centre (CBLC), under which children’s community members educate and learn through training programmes. Now under the dynamic leadership of Neelam, Childfund is going through its most successful phase and growing rapidly.