Gopinath

Gopinath grew up in Manchiganahalli, a village in Kolar district, Karnataka, in an agricultural family. His father sold the family's property and left the household when Gopinath was three; the children worked alongside their mother instead of attending school, and Gopinath spent time labouring in cow sheds and fields before he was eventually enrolled in a school in Bangalore. He completed a Master's degree in Social Work in 2004.

In 2002, with friends from the social work field, Gopinath formed the Social Workers' Association for People (SWAP), which worked on primary education for underprivileged children, counselling for school dropouts, health camps and awareness programmes in government schools. While doing fieldwork he encountered children working in stone quarries near Bettalasuru and began running non-formal classes for them.

In 2005 he founded Sparsha Trust with his friend D. S. Krishna and his wife Chitra, to work with street children and other children in need of care and protection. Sparsha runs residential and educational projects including Makkala Dhama, Nisarga Grama, work with children on construction sites, a programme for children of waste-pickers, and after-care and vocational programmes. The organisation states that it has rescued and rehabilitated more than 2,500 children since 2009 and enrolled over 3,000 children in government-affiliated schools in Bangalore.

Gopinath received the Sri Sri Award from the Art of Living Foundation in 2013 for social service. Under his leadership Sparsha Trust was named Best Non-Governmental Organisation by the Government of Karnataka in 2014, and received the Best NGO Award for Child and Women Welfare from the Governor of Karnataka in 2017. In 2017 he was selected for the Professor Yashwantrao Kelkar Youth Award for national youth leadership, presented in Ranchi. In 2022 he received the RotaryHero Award from Rotary India in the category of basic education and literacy.[2][3][4][5]