Dilbur Parakh

Parakh trained as a lawyer and practised in the Bombay High Court in her early career. She worked on women's rights at SNDT Women's University in Mumbai, and then moved to Thailand, where she worked with the Union for Civil Liberty. For five years she was Legal Officer for Asia and the Pacific at the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva.

Aseema's founders registered a public charitable trust in 1995 after concluding that legal provisions for children had little effect on the ground. Meeting children who were begging at traffic signals, rag-picking or working at tea stalls and garages in Bandra, they decided that education offered the only lasting remedy, and opened an education centre for eighteen children in December 1997.

In 2002 Aseema began adopting municipal schools in partnership with the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai. It runs schools at Pali Chimbai, Kherwadi and Santacruz in Mumbai, and a school for tribal children at Igatpuri in Nashik district, a project Parakh has described as particularly close to her. The organisation's schools use a Montessori-influenced approach and stress values-based education.

Parakh is listed on Aseema's own website as chairperson and trustee.

Aseema has received a number of awards during Parakh's chairmanship, among them the Goolestan and Rustom Billimoria Endowment Award in 2001, the Diwaliben Mohanlal Mehta Award and the Mancherjee Joshi Memorial Trust Award in 2002, the Indo-American Society Young Achiever Award and the Rotary Vocational Award in 2003, a National Award at the 52nd National Film Awards in 2005 for the animated film on child rights Raju & I, the Green Crusader Award from the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board and Bhamla Foundation in 2017, and Rotary International's Vocational Excellence Award in 2018.[2][3][4][5][6]