Our Team
Vandana Asha
Founder & Executive Officer
Vandana is an applied theatre practitioner and founder of Rang Karwan. She is a Journalist by education and an artist by birth. With her passion being music and dance since childhood, she enjoys working with adolescents and youth. Her interests and practice lies in creating spaces for communities and using arts in learning and pedagogy. She also believes and practices a minimalist and sustainable lifestyle.
Pankaj Dev
Head of Operations
Pankaj is a local resident of Champawat. He's pursuing Bachelor in Arts from the same town. Along with interest in social activities and creative things, he also pays attention to literature. He started as one of the local volunteers of Rang Kaarwaan and leads the operations of our projects. He writes poetries and 'Pahadi raps'.
Nirmala
Project Lead, PLLC
Nirmala is an ambitious and a resident of Champawat and has completed her graduation from Champawat as well. She finds her peace among kids, which is why she always wanted to be a teacher. She is highly passionate about teaching children at learning center and helping them understand different facets of life.
Tarun Pant
Programmatic Director
Tarun is a resident of Champawat. Along with interest in social activities and his creative pursuits, he is fond of reading children literature. He startyed as project head in Rang Kaarwaan and currently leads all the programs in Champawat. With facilitation as one of his strengths, we writes poetries and stories & aspire to create short aanimation films in fututre.
Lata Upreti
Project Lead, Rang Shaalaa
Lata is an artist at heart and a facilitator at work. She was born and brought up in Champawat. Lata leads our Rang Shaalaa project and takes care of the quality of intervention. She has been working with us for the past 2 years at our learning center. She loves working with kids and enjoys reading time to time.
Dolly Rateshwar
Mentor, Strategy Team
With 8+ years of work experience at some of the best MNC's - Google, LinkedIn, and MySpace as one of the early team members in India. Dolly has also been a founding team member at Qyuki - a media startup by Shekhar Kapur, AR Rahman and Samir Bangara.
While she was always working towards giving back to the community in the form of teaching students on the street since she was in college, she has finally focused her career on delivering social impact through "The Dharavi Dream Project's #AfterSchoolofHiphop" - an initiative to give hip-hop artists (under-served talent) of Asia's biggest slum a platform to have free and easy access to share one's thoughts and expressions through music, dance and art form.
Sanyukta Saha
Mentor
Sanyukta is an applied theatre practitioner based out of Delhi. She is a part of a vibrant community of theatre makers and facilitators, known as Aagaaz Theatre Trust. Her curiosities and practice span community based theatre, education, theatre for young audiences, and drama and its applications for professionals. She is currently working towards understanding and engaging with the relationship between mental health and social change in her practice with children, adolescents and young adults. Her experiences with pandies' theatre, Aga Khan Foundation, Think Arts and many other collaborations, shape her understanding of her practice and her outlook.
Jaya Iyer
Mentor
For over three decades Jaya has been exploring the warp and weft of the world of art, learning and transformation, social development and ecological integrity. She uses interactive and reflective practices based on theatre of the of the oppressed, NVC, Instruction design, contemplative and Arts based processes. She was awarded UNESCO Aschberg bursary to study the Theater of the Oppressed with Augusto Boal, WISCOMP scholar of peace fellowship. She received USAID and Show of Force- Award of recognition.
Zubair Idrisi
Mentor, Strategy Team
Zubair Idrisi has been a theatre practitioner for more than fifteen years. His area of interest lies in working around the transformative power of theatre in influencing social
change. He specialises in theatre-based training and facilitation of workshops at individual, community and organizational level. He has extensive experience in project design and coordination with a focus on youth-and gender-oriented programs. He has designed and executed various social campaigns as well, each addressing a specific cause or an issue.
Shifali Bhagat
Social Media Volunteer
Finding a ray of hope is what Shifali stands for. She knows how to give words to an unspoken scenery and break every barrier of social construct. She holds a Bachelors degree in Political Science and believes to set aside all the biases and stereotypes. Her love to make a difference connected her with Rang Kaarwaan.
