The Founder
Passionate about children and their well-being, Pramod Kulkarni founded SATHI with major focus on rehabilitation of run-away children. His experience and research convinced him that run-away children could be settled back with families. An action-oriented individual, he decided to demonstrate it and that too, in large numbers. At a national scale.
Pramod’s interests in the voluntary sector goes back to his years in Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad where he was pursuing his Post Graduate Diploma in Management. Before this, he had completed his Masters in Statistics from MS University, Baroda. Even as he was pursuing his PGDM, he approached some NGOs in Gujarat to work, but was turned down. But the firmness of his belief to work in the development sector only grew stronger.
He eventually joined PRADAN, an organization which believed that professionally educated individuals must work at the grassroots level to address development challenges. During his stint here, Pramod was thoroughly exposed to practical realities of communities and their issues, but was able to combine his management skills and data driven approach to find solutions. While in PRADAN, he started another organization Prerana, which worked on the issue of irrigation in the dry and rugged North Karnataka districts. Prerana was incubated in PRADAN before becoming an independent entity.
Working with children started almost by accident, with a handful of children on Raichur railway station, resulting in the formation of a new and dedicated organization, SATHI. Since the last 25 years, his zeal and commitment has helped SATHI grow into a national organization and bring national attention to the issue of railway children. His broad vision, which pertains to the child protection sector rather than one organization’s goal or objective, continues to guide SATHI to this day.
