Suparna Gupta

Founder

Suparna Gupta is the founder of Aangan Trust [1], an Indian non-profit working on women & children, anti-trafficking and human rights.

Suparna Gupta is an Indian social entrepreneur and the founder of Aangan, a child protection organisation established in 2002 that works to prevent serious harm to children in districts with a high incidence of child marriage, child labour and trafficking.

She left a career in advertising to set up the organisation, beginning with a psychosocial programme for child survivors in a rescue home in Mumbai.

Career

Gupta founded Aangan in 2002 with the aim of protecting the most excluded and vulnerable children. The initial programme in a Mumbai rescue home grew into a country-wide effort, run in partnership with state departments, to improve care, conditions and rehabilitation in government-run shelter homes for rescued and trafficked children.

At Aangan she has developed an integrated model for the prevention of child harm, intended to reduce both the occurrence and the recurrence of serious harm to children. The organisation works to influence India's juvenile justice and child protection policy and operates in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha, Maharashtra and Jharkhand. She also serves on the board of Dasra, and has written for publications including India Development Review, The Wire and The Washington Post.

Recognition

Gupta was awarded an Ashoka Fellowship for Leading Social Entrepreneurs in 2009 and was selected as an Asia 21 Young Leader in 2011. In 2012 she was an Edward S. Mason Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and a member of the Ash Center Fellowship for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

She was a finalist for the Jubilant Bhartia Schwab Foundation India Social Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2015, and in 2016 received the L'Oreal NDTV Women of Worth Award for Social Impact and was named among CNBC TV18's Young Businesswomen.[2][3][4][5]

Aangan Trust

Aangan Trust builds community-led child protection in India's most vulnerable districts, training women volunteers and working with government to prevent child marriage, trafficking and hazardous labour. It reports impacting 20+ lakh children, preventing 1,582 child marriages and removing 15,446 children from labour.

Aangan Trust reports the following, on its own site:

20 lakh+ children impacted overall across 16 states in 22 years
1,582 child marriages prevented (2017-present)
15,446 working children removed from work or had hours reduced and were enrolled in school
18,740 out-of-school children started going to school or vocational courses