Richa Gupta, a social entrepreneur, is an ex-student of the 2014 batch of TIS. She has been an active socialist and started her journey with a question in her mind “What does it take to preserve empathy among children?” With the enthusiasm to work for children, she co-founded Labhya Foundation, an India-based non-profit organisation. She has worked as an educator, volunteer, mentor and activist with children from at-risk, refugee and migrant communities across India. She has been a “Teach For India” fellow and a “Teach For All Global Girls’ Education” fellow.

At the age of 21 years, Richa co-founded Labhya Foundation, with the vision of enabling all children to become conscious decision makers. Labhya Foundation enables children from low socio-economic backgrounds with Social and Emotional skills. It is a Delhi-based non-profit organisation, working to enable children from government schools with Social & Emotional skills to improve their decision-making ability and future quality of life. Labhya has proposed, designed and is ensuring the effective implementation of the world’s largest Social Emotional Learning (SEL) interventions namely ‘Happiness Curriculum’ and ‘Anandam Pathyacharya’ with the Governments of Delhi and Uttarakhand respectively. Labhya impacts 2 Million+ students, 110,000+ teachers in 19,000+ schools daily through these partnerships.

Labhya’s intervention with the Delhi Government (called the “Happiness Curriculum”) was launched by HH Dalai Lama and has been visited by eminent personalities like the First Lady of the United States of America. It has been recognized and supported by prestigious organisations like the US State Department, The Commonwealth Youth Award, The Takeda Foundation, Press Club of India and Girls20. Additionally, Labhya’s work has been covered by various platforms like the World Economic Forum, Le Monde, Washington Post, BBC and many more.

All this is because of the hard work and immense efforts put in by Richa. Her work has been recognized by organisations like the U.S State Department, Press Club of India, and French Development Agency and she has been praised for her extraordinary contribution towards systemic change in India. She has also represented India at the 2019 G(irls)20 Summit Japan, where she helped draft a communiqué to be deliberated on by G20 leaders. She represented her organisation at the Women’s Forum Global Meeting 2019 in Paris. Most recently, she has been awarded Best Entrepreneur of the Year 2019 by the Takeda Foundation, Japan.

Richa has indeed made us proud and will continue working with the same zeal.