Ankit Chhabra

Co-founder

Ankit Chhabra is the co-founder of Sanjhi Sikhiya [1], an Indian non-profit working on education and livelihood from Mohali.

Ankit Chhabra is an Indian development sector professional and a co-founder of Sanjhi Sikhiya, a non-profit organisation established in 2018 that works to improve the government school system in Punjab.

Sanjhi Sikhiya's principal programme is the Punjab Youth Leadership Programme, a two-year fellowship placing young people in government schools to work with teachers and local education officials.

Early life and education

Chhabra took a bachelor's degree in civil engineering at the National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, and a master's degree at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, where he researched sustainable cement.

Career

After his master's degree Chhabra worked briefly on highway bridge construction in the Himalayas, then taught in rural Rajasthan, which he has described as the turning point in his career. He subsequently worked with the Future Group, Indus Action and TAP India before turning to work on education in Punjab.

In 2018 he became a co-founder of Sanjhi Sikhiya, alongside Simranpreet Singh Oberoi, an alumnus of the Young India Fellowship at Ashoka University, and Ishpreet Kaur, a Thapar University graduate and Teach For India alumna. The organisation's stated aim is that all children in Punjab attain foundational capabilities in an enabling environment.

Its flagship Punjab Youth Leadership Programme is a two-year fellowship in which young leaders are placed in government-run schools, working with teachers on classroom practice and with officials on local education governance. The programme began in the districts of Fatehgarh Sahib, Patiala and Ropar, and by 2021 fellows had been placed in some 300 schools.

Recognition

Sanjhi Sikhiya is a member of the Punjab Education Collective, a group of four non-profits which received the Collective Social Innovation Award from the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship in 2023.[2][3][4]

Sanjhi Sikhiya

Sanjhi Sikhiya works in Punjab on the belief that lasting change comes when the people closest to a problem take responsibility for it, and sees young people as the catalyst. From its Mohali office and centres in Patiala, Bathinda, Ropar and Fatehgarh Sahib, it runs the Punjab Youth Leaders Program, the Punjab Education Collective and its Joy of Learning work, aiming for all children in Punjab to attain foundational learning.

Sanjhi Sikhiya reports the following, on its own site: