Anukriti Goyal

Co-founder

Anukriti Goyal is the co-founder of Apni Shala Foundation [1], an Indian non-profit working on education and mental health from Mumbai.

Anukriti Goyal is one of the three co-founders of the Apni Shala Foundation, a Mumbai-based charitable trust that runs social and emotional learning programmes for children in low-income schools and communities.

Apni Shala was started in 2011 by Goyal together with Swetha Ranganathan and Amrita Nair, all graduates of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and was registered as a trust in 2013.

Early life and education

Goyal holds a bachelor's degree in polymer engineering from the University Department of Chemical Technology in Mumbai and a master's degree in social entrepreneurship from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

Career

Goyal worked in the petrochemical industry with Reliance before leaving to help start Apni Shala. The founders' starting point was that good education must address children's emotional and social development, and that children from low-income households face additional pressures that contribute to high dropout rates.

Her subsequent work has spanned several areas of grassroots development, and she describes her role as connecting people, resources and ideas across sectors.[2][3][4]

Apni Shala Foundation

Apni Shala Foundation works on social-emotional learning, which it describes as nurturing cognitive, emotional and behavioural well-being for self and society. Based in Mumbai, it delivers experiential programmes using art, drama, games and community work in schools, runs its Khoj community lab school and a whole-school transformation initiative, trains educators and organisations through SEL Shala and Diversity Shala, and campaigns on mental health and inclusion.

Apni Shala Foundation reports the following, on its own site: