Sunita Vishwas, Co-Founder: Sunita Vishwas is the co-founder of Trutiya Ratna. She is a research scholar, development professional, and activist. She has completed her Master of Arts in Social Work with a specialisation in disability studies and a Master of Philosophy degree in social work. She is pursuing a PhD in education from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She has been awarded a Junior and Senior Research Fellowship by the University Grants Commission under the Government of India. She has more than five years of work experience in the development sector. She has worked with women, children, persons with disabilities, Adivasis, and Dalits in the northern and eastern parts of India. She has worked as a young professional with the Jharkhand State Livelihood Promotion Society, an implementing agency for the National Rural Livelihood Mission in Jharkhand. She has worked as a programme officer at Koshish, a field action project of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, where she was part of a team conducting a social audit of shelter homes funded by the Department of Social Welfare, Government of Bihar. She has also worked as a research manager with Project Mukti in New Delhi. She, as a Dalit woman, strives to build leadership in women, transgender persons, children, and persons with disabilities who are most vulnerable within the Dalit/SC communities. Her areas of interest are school education, higher education, teacher education, leadership building, caste, gender, and disability. Her hobbies are reading memoirs and narratives of Dalit writers & activists. She finds it inspiring to build resilience among first-generation learners like her.
Prasann Kumari, Co-Founder: Prasann has co-founded Trutiya Ratna with the vision and mission of raising caste consciousness through education in Bihar. Prasann identifies herself as an intersectional feminist. Her idea of feminism is deeply rooted in the inseparability of caste, class, and gender identities and the political assertion of feminist ideology, and she thus strongly believes in intersectional feminism. She comes from a backward/marginalised caste, so her understanding of feminism comes from situated knowledge. Her motivation behind working for human rights and social justice for marginalised women is to address the multi-layered discrimination faced for generations and aim for the radical transformation of society. Her work and activism are strongly grounded in her educational qualifications. She has completed her M.Phil. in Women’s and Gender Studies from Ambedkar University (AUD), New Delhi, India. She is pursuing a PhD in Women’s Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, India. In her research work, she has critically analysed policies and acts that affect women’s human rights from marginalised sections. She has worked as a Guest Faculty member at the Department of Social Work, University of Delhi. She is originally from Bihar but was born and raised in Jharkhand in a town called Jamshedpur. She has experience working at the grassroots level in the rural areas of Madhya Pradesh, focusing on women-centred livelihood and empowerment. She has also worked as a research assistant with projects supported by ILO & UNFPA. She has also worked on the issues of domestic workers and child marriage. Her research interests are caste, gender, higher education, etc. She is a Bahujan feminist coming from a backward caste.
We are registered as UPPALAM FOUNDATION under the Companies Act 2013 (18 of 2013).
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