Who we are

Building ecosystems where rights are realized, not just promised

About Samavesh

Samavesh is a non-profit organisation committed to making public systems work for those who’ve long been excluded from them. We operate at the intersection of social security, education, active citizenship and leadership development, building pathways that connect policy with people, and aspiration with opportunity.  

Rooted in lived experience and led by community changemakers, Samavesh began with a single encounter in 2011 that revealed the cost of exclusion: a girl named Roshni was forced to leave school simply because she had begun menstruating. That moment sparked a journey that grew into a movement—one that now works across rural blocks, urban communities, and public institutions to close the gap between rights promised and rights realized.

We work across four core programs:

Samavesh Centre

Enabling access to social security, welfare schemes, and scholarships through civic access centers anchored by trained grassroots paralegals (fellows)

Samavesh Scholars

Mentoring and guiding students from marginalised backgrounds to access and succeed in higher education.

After-School Program

Supporting foundational learning, life skills, and career pathways

Samavesh Champions

Building Life Skills and Mental Well-Being Through Sport for Development, Play, and Creative Expression

Across these pillars, our work is people-powered, tech-enabled, and outcome-driven. We combine fieldwork with systems thinking—training fellows, working with schools, co-creating with government, and using data to inform change.

At Samavesh, we don’t just implement programs—we create ecosystems where marginalized individuals become decision-makers, role models, and leaders of their own futures.

Vision

A just and inclusive India where every individual—regardless of caste, gender, disability, or background—can access their rights, complete their education, and lead with dignity, agency, and opportunity. Our vision is rooted in creating systems that are accountable and communities that are empowered, placing those historically excluded at the heart of change. Through this, we aim to foster upward social mobility and contribute to the eradication of poverty.

Mission

To bridge the gap between policy and practice, aspiration and access, by:
  • Delivering last-mile access to legal identity and social protection.
  • Supporting students from low-income, marginalised and first-generation learners to access and thrive in higher education.
  • Running After-School Learning Program and school collaborations that build foundational learning, career awareness, and life readiness
  • Building a cadre of youth leaders, fellows, and mentors from within the communities we serve
  • Using data, technology, and lived experience to influence systems, shift narratives, and enable long-term, scalable change
We don’t just implement programs—we build pathways of inclusion and prepare the next generation to aspire, act, and achieve.

How We Began

Seeds

A life-changing encounter

We, as a movement, were born from a simple yet life-changing encounter in 2011. During a visit to a village in Assam, our founder Pravin Nikam met a young girl named Roshni, who had dropped out of school because she had started menstruating. Her father believed it was a curse and withdrew her from education. That moment became a turning point. It revealed how deeply entrenched stigma, gender inequality, and misinformation were harming girls and denying them a future.

Beginnings

The ROSHNI Initiative

In response, Pravin launched the ROSHNI initiative in 2011, which began with grassroots workshops on menstrual hygiene and gender justice, and soon grew into a platform for policy advocacy—campaigning for tax-free sanitary pads, engaging with youth, and pushing for inclusive education. His voice reached national and global stages, including the Global Citizen Festival.

Growth

As the work deepened, new efforts emerged, focusing on active citizenship and consitutional values literacy for young citizens, and the other initiative aimed at ensuring mentoring for higer education and access to justice, identity, and legal entitlements for the excluded. These initiatives tackled different aspects of exclusion but were deeply connected in purpose.

Future

Samavesh

Eventually, these threads—education, identity, social protection, gender equity, and grassroots leadership—came together under a unified vision: Samavesh

Today, Samavesh is a grassroots organisation working at the frontlines of inclusion and justice—bridging the distance between policy and people, and ensuring that no Roshni is ever left behind again.

PRESENT

Our Values and Principles

At Samavesh, we believe that building a just and inclusive society begins with listening to those most excluded from it. Our values reflect our unwavering commitment to dignity, access, and grassroots leadership.

Justice

At Samavesh —we reclaim rights. Our work is grounded in the belief that access to education, identity, and welfare is a constitutional guarantee. We support communities in securing what they are rightfully owed.

Led by Lived Experience

The best solutions come from those who live the problem. We center the voices of first-generation learners, informal workers, women, NT-DNT youth, and persons with disabilities—not just as beneficiaries, but as leaders, Fellows, and staff.

From Access to Accountability

We work to ensure every individual can access what they are entitled to—be it a scholarship, a legal document, or a place in school. But we go beyond access, by holding systems accountable to the people they were meant to serve.

Care as Praxis

We believe that care is not soft—it’s structural. Whether it is a child needing academic support, or a parent needing to be heard, we embed emotional safety, trust, and patience into every program we design.

Equity in Action

We actively resist caste, gender, and class hierarchies. In our hiring, curriculum, partnerships, and pedagogy, we strive to challenge exclusion, not replicate it.

Local Action, Systemic Change

From helping one girl re-enroll in school to training grassroots Fellows, we connect individual transformation to broader systems reform. Our scale is measured not in numbers alone, but in narrative shifts and policy pathways.

Transparency With the People We Serve

Our primary accountability is to the communities who trust us. We practice honest communication, open feedback, and shared decision-making. We don’t promise what we can’t deliver—and we always return to listen.

Our People

At Samavesh, we believe that change begins with people—those who have lived the challenges, questioned the systems, and committed their lives to building a more just society. Our team brings together grassroots experience, legal expertise, and deep commitment to rights-based development.

Adv. Pravin Nikam

Founder

Adv. Pravin Nikam is a lawyer, educator, and social entrepreneur from Satara, Maharashtra. Raised in a family of farmers who migrated to Khed-Chakan in search of a livelihood, Pravin supported his household by delivering newspapers while pursuing his studies. Inspired by his father’s role in the workers’ rights movement, he was drawn early into grassroots advocacy, shaping his lifelong commitment to justice, equity, and access.

 

In 2011, he launched the ROSHINI community-led intervention focused on gender, education, and youth empowerment. This later evolved into Samavesh (meaning inclusion), a rights-based organisation dedicated to bridging the gap between policy and grassroots access for marginalised communities across India.

Academic Background: Pravin holds an MSc in Human Rights and Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he was awarded a Chevening Scholarship by the UK Government. 

He also holds an LL.M. in Constitutional and Administrative Law, an LL.B., and a Bachelor’s in Political Science from Savitribai Phule Pune University. As a legal professional, he has worked as a Social Work Fellow with Project 39A at NLU Delhi, on access to justice.

 

Acknowledgement: His contributions have received acknowledgment—he is a recipient of the National Youth Award (Awarded by the Government of India), has served as a Commonwealth Election Observer in Zambia appointed by the Commonwealth Secretariat, London, is also a Women Deliver Young Leader and has spoken at international platforms such as the Global Citizen in New York. 

His work has been acknowledged by UNESCO MGIEP, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, and Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg in their public speeches for advancing youth-led civic transformation and justice.

Siddharth Hendre

Head of Programs – Education, Access & Systems Strengthening

Sidharth Hendre is a development sector professional with experience across education, youth development, social security, and public service delivery in India. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science (Hons.) from MIT–World Peace University, Pune, and brings a hands-on, systems-oriented approach to program implementation.

 

Over the past four years, Sidharth has worked with leading non-profits including Goonj, the American India Foundation (AIF), and Pratham Education Foundation—engaging with communities across diverse geographies, from urban slums in Pune and PCMC to remote tribal belts of Chhattisgarh and the Northeast.

At Goonj, he implemented multi-state projects focused on education, healthcare, and rural development. At AIF, he led digital literacy and youth development efforts for students in low-income government and private schools in Hyderabad. As a Program Associate at Pratham, he oversaw education interventions and donor coordination in Assam, Meghalaya, and Tripura.

 

Currently, with Samavesh, Sidharth supports access to education and public schemes through grassroots mobilisation and data-driven program design. His core competencies include monitoring & evaluation, curriculum development, MIS reporting, stakeholder management, and capacity building.

 

Sidharth is deeply committed to equity and inclusive governance. His work is driven by a belief in systemic change and the potential of community-led development in even the most under-resourced settings.

Vaishali Jadhav

Program Co-ordinator – Documentation & Community Engagement

Vaishali brings over a decade of experience in education, media, and community development, with a deep focus on early childhood education and tribal outreach.

 

She served as a committee member at Nutan Bal Shikshan Sangh, Palghar—a pioneering institution founded by Padma Bhushan Tarabai Modak and Padma Shri Anutai Wagh—where she managed administrative functions and edited the monthly publication Shikshan Patrika. Her leadership extended to historical documentation and field research across tribal regions such as Palghar, Dahanu, Jawhar, Wada, and Mokhada.

Vaishali has also been actively involved with grassroots organizations including Nari Samata Manch  and Grammangal, conducting capacity-building workshops for tribal youth and contributing to magazines and newspapers. She co-authored and curated the widely-read parenting guidebook Smart Parenting.

 

Currently, Vaishali leads documentation and outreach for the scholarship program at Samavesh. Her work supports students across urban and peri-urban areas of Pune, and in tribal and rural pockets such as Baramati, Saswad, and Lonavala—ensuring every story of access and aspiration is captured with care.

Pratik Ingale

Program Co-ordinator – Disability, Equity and Inclusion

Pratik Ingale is a development professional with a Master’s degree in Media and Communication Studies, specialising in media research. He is UGC-NET and Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) qualified, and brings a strong academic foundation alongside lived experience to his work in the disability sector. Having lost his vision at the age of nine, Pratik has since been deeply engaged in advancing assistive technology and advocating for accessibility in the disability sector.

 

In addition to his programmatic work, Pratik is a digital advocate who creates accessible content on assistive technology through short-format reels and videos on YouTube and Instagram. His content focuses on awareness, rights-based information, and practical tools for navigating everyday barriers.

Pratik’s work is grounded in a rights-based approach to disability inclusion, and he continues to bridge the gap between policy and practice by building accessible, supportive environments for students with disabilities.

Awards, Recognition & Mentions

At Samavesh, our community interventions through our projects like ROSHINI, Samata Center has been recognised both in India and globally for its deep commitment to equity, grassroots leadership, and systems change. These recognitions reflect not just our achievements, but the strength of the communities we work with and the potential of youth-led, justice-driven action.

About

Awards & Honors

National Youth Award - Awarded by the Government of India

Maharashtra State Youth Award - Awarded by the Government of Maharashtra

Commonwealth Asia Regional Award - Awarded by the Commonwealth Secretariat

Yashwantrao Chavan State Youth Award by Yashwantrao Chavan Centre

Recipient of the NISAU–British Council Young Achievers Award, celebrating 75 outstanding Indians who have studied in the UK.

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Global Mentions

Hon. Amina Mohammed, UN Deputy Secretary General, appreciated the impactful work of our founder, Pravin Nikam at the Global Citizen Festival in India.
In her speech at Global Citizen Live at the Skirball Center, New York (18 Sept 2017), Prime Minister Erna Solberg recognised and appreciated the impactful work of our Founder Pravin Nikam.

Partners & Supporters

At Samavesh, we believe that lasting change is co-created. Our mission to build equitable access to education, identity, and public services is made possible through the strength of our partnerships—with institutions that share our vision of justice, inclusion, and dignity for all.

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Academic & College Partners

Our collaborations with progressive academic institutions strengthen access to higher education for first-generation learners. These colleges host our workshops, refer students for mentoring, and enable outreach to underrepresented communities.

Shardabai Pawar Mahavidyala

Dnyandeep College

DY Patil Law College

Ramkrishna More College

DY Patil Arts, Commerce, Science

Indrayani College

BN Purandare College

T.S Borate College, Shinoli

DY Patil, BCA & BSc

Arvind Telang College

D.Y.Patil Women's College

Arihant College

Modern College of Pharmacy

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Incubation & Ecosystem Partners

We are grateful to be supported by accelerators and capacity-building platforms that help us grow our impact sustainably.

IIM Bangalore

ATMA

Tarachand Ramnath Trust

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