Ms. Savitri Sharma, is Country Director of Find Your Feet ( a British Charity ) in India and Nepal and Secretary to Saksham India Trust, Treasurer and board member of ‘Credibility Alliance’ New Delhi and a certified Coach of Plan International , Washington DC . But then those are just dry designations that do no justice to someone who is a passionate changemaker in the lives of those who need it the most- especially tribals, adolescents and women from deprived communities.
As a young girl though, when she had to write that mandatory school essay on life’s ambitions, she had little idea about the development sector. Yet even in those growing up years in Kalimpong, when life’s goals were decided more by circumstances than choice, she was an enthusiastic and committed teacher in her beautiful home town ‘ Kalimpong ’.
After a brief stint in teaching, Ms Sharma moved to Allahabad where she coordinated an integrated programme supported by the Belgian citizens that worked to better the health, education and economic status of deprived communities. Life’s calling had finally found her. She then moved to CARE, India where from field officer who had to walk her way to some of UP’s most remote villages and teach women the importance of thrift and entrepreneurship, she rose to the position of Project Manager. Next came a two year stint as Director of Prerana Population Resource Center, Lucknow, an organisation which catered to the training and capacity building need of hundreds of NGOs engaged in implementing a mammoth USAID funded programme on Population and Reproductive Health. This was not a final destination for her unquestionable commitment to the disadvantaged communities; she then joined ‘Swedish Organization for Individual Relief’ a development partner of Swedish Government as Country Director for India and contributed significantly in the areas of Inclusive Education, Disability, Sustainable livelihood and a major funder to the Tibetan Refugees Administration in Dharamsala.

30 years after she first knocked on a door to talk about how women mattered if change had to be real and long lasting, she heads the Find Your Feet India and Nepal offices she established solely and nurses the eight year old Saksham India Trust to implement projects that empower, among others, brick kiln workers and traditional weavers and various tribal communities in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand , Uttar Pradesh, Tamilnadu and Assam.

Her list of expertise is long term Strategic Planning, Program Management, Liaison & Networking, research and analyses, establishing linkages, handling interstate partnerships- being just some of them.

The position closest to her heart though is being a certified coach for Plan International -USA – a role that calls upon her to mentor women to develop the skills to find success in every area of life. This is a role she has played for women across the world- from Manju-a Raji tribal toiling in the mountains of Pithoragarh to Tina, who heads Youth First, an NGO in Madagascar, to Hadeel in Iraq who supports women to start their enterprise in refugee camps of Iraq and to Megha from SEWA, Gujarat who is replicating SEWA model of women cooperative in Afganistan.s She is also one of the select few in the world to be trained, certified and sponsored by USAID as a master coach on “Women in management” and sponsored for certification and training by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as coach on “Women in Leadership”.

Ms Sharma holds degrees in Commerce, Education, Social Work in addition to certification on NGO management from Bond Institute, UK in NGO management, and has multiple language proficiencies.

She is, most definitely one of the finest embodiments of the belief that if the world is to change, women have to be that change.

Participant in: August 2018 Fellowship: Peacebuilding and Women’s Meaningful Participation in Peacebuilding Processes