| My Journey |

Dr Neelam Gupta is the president and CEO of AROH Foundation – a not for profit organization working towards empowering poor and marginalized communities through well-designed programmes in education, skill development, sustainable livelihood, health and sanitation in more than 18 states of India. She is a gold medallist from Delhi University, holds a Ph.D in Agricultural Sciences with more than 20 years of experience in extensive social work.

After a successful tenure as an entrepreneur, she established AROH Foundation to realize her childhood dream of creating a positive change in the society. Set up and registered in 2001, AROH Foundation initially focused on providing research and strategy planning support to programmes run by the Government of India. Realizing the need of development work at the grassroots level, she enabled the organization to take up interventions which were need based and directly benefited the marginalized and vulnerable communities.

Under her strong leadership and mentoring, AROH Foundation has provided skill development training to more than 50,000 poor and unemployed youth, empowered more than 25,000 women through skill development training and enrolled more than 35,000 out-of-school children in formal schools. Her efforts in the area of Women Empowerment, Girl Education and Gender Mainstreaming have enabled the organization to create and sustain Social Development Projects such as – Padho Aur Badho, Garima, Udaan and Utkarsh and these projects have been recognized by the Government agencies and model projects.

At AROH Foundation, Dr. Neelam Gupta has conceptualized, planned, and developed innovative approaches to harness the power of science and technology towards the development of the vulnerable and marginalized communities in the remote parts of India. She played an integral part in ideating and implementing the Integrated Village Development Programme – a dynamic rural development programme implemented in hundreds of remote villages of India in different states, like Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Meghalaya etc. Her vision and strategic direction has enabled the programme to scale new heights with successful construction of more 10000 Individual Household Units, 6000 Solar Driven Street lights and 250 Solar Water Filtration units in more than 100 villages of India. The intervention has directly benefited and empowered thousands of households and enabled to access basic needs such as Water and Sanitation.

She is also a Global Goodwill Ambassador, Chairperson of DMA’s CSR & Sustainability Committee, member of stellar community of UN Global Compact India Network’s CSR Committee Education Expert of Business Today group. Having an artistic connect to her personal side, Dr Gupta is also a designer Author, Editor and a qualified Astrologer.

Neelam Gupta has been a spirited leader of AROH and has inculcated commitment and sincerity towards work as strong values for the organization. She has integrated the use of technology to bring transparency and accountability through information sharing and developing sound systems and policies of internal checks, monitoring and evaluation thereby creating a good will as well credibility for AROH Foundation. The perseverance of Dr. Neelam Gupta has resulted in the recognizing the work of AROH Foundation nationally as well as internationally and the important milestone include – Mahatma Gandhi Award by Live week group in New York, Best CSR Professional Award in Livelihood, Best Community Award for Global Sustainability, Best NGO Award for Community Development, Asia Pacific International Award, CSR Leader of the Year Award, etc.

Apart from her social work, Dr Gupta has been the mind behind many editorial marvels including Eternal India (astro – spiritual musings of K N Rao) and many more. She has been a stimulating orator, and though provoking writer, writing on burning socio – political issues.

Her undying zeal to help the downtrodden of the society has perched the Foundation as a leading national level NGO in the social development sector. Under her able leadership, the Foundation has grown by leaps and bounds touching more than two lakh poor and needy persons across 18 states of India benefiting more than 10 lakh lives by far. Her work and milestones can be seen at www.aroh.in