Barefoot Edu Foundation – Social Entrepreneurship

Active

Barefoot Edu Foundation

Building school leadership for the 21st Century

Headquarters

Maharashtra

Thematic area

Education

Region(s) of work

Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh

Company Size

Sub-Theme(s)

Children and Youth

About the Organization

Every child has a strong foundation to think, feel, dream, and thrive. Over the past four years Barefoot Edu has realised impact at three levels – adopted 10 schools, enabled school leaders of 25 schools, and implemented state wide projects with 130,000 schools with UP state government

Active Founder(s)

Saumya Aggarwal As the CEO and Director of Programs at Barefoot Edu Foundation, Saumya is on a mission to design transformative education programs. Her experience spans across designing school transformation interventions for schools and school clusters to district wide systems. Her design is an embodiment of the name Barefoot- taking bold steps while being sensitive to the ground that one treads on. As a woman entrepreneur she strongly believes in unleashing the potential of women in leadership positions and is passionate about mentoring budding womenpreneurs.

Subhankar Paul Subhankar is on a mission to bring together communities and transform education and the communities as a whole. His experience Teach For India as a fellow and then as an Assistant School Leader led him to work with children, teachers, school leaders and parents in low income communities. Post that, as a social entrepreneur, he designed and implemented a school transformation programs and life-skills through sports programs for students from economically and socially under-resourced families. He is currently the Director of Operations at Barefoot Edu Foundation and believes strongly in the power of the collective. He has also served as a consultant to the International Olympics Committee’s Young Leaders Program, designing and implementing a sports based mentorship and career guidance program for young adults. Additionally, Subhankar is a part of a pan India School Assessor Network which examines schools and consults for rapid improvement of the school.

Jonathan Mendonca Jonathan Mendonca is the Co-founder and Director of Strategy at Barefoot Edu Foundation, a non-profit focused on building educational leadership in India. Civil Engineer turned educator, Jonathan trusts in the potential of people to build the foundation for social change and is on a mission to decentralize education by empowering leaders at the grassroots so that the voice, values, and goals of their communities shape education. In this regard, he designed Rehnuma, the world's first incubator for School Principals which coaches them to be entrepreneurial in their approach to building autonomous 21st century schools. Jonathan holds a masters in International Education Policy at Harvard Graduate school of education and has been awarded the New world social innovation Fellowship from the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also a Saul Zaentz Fellow, Young India Fellow, Mother Teresa Fellow, and was invited to share his experience at the United Nation's ECOSOC '19 Youth Forum.