Pooja Kandula

Pooja is a doctor turned development professional with over nine years' experience in core competencies of both programmatic and management aspects. She has worked closely with State and Central governments, Corporates and Not-for-Profit organizations, in varying capacities.

She started her career working with Nari Gunjan (Bihar, India), where her role focused on ensuring child protection, women empowerment via education, and Dalit rights, through collaborative engagement with community and other relevant stakeholders.

At Aarambh India, she worked with renowned experts such as Dr Pravin Patkar and assisted on a research programme to understand the implementation of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act 2012 (POCSO) across the state of Maharashtra and worked on building an alliance of regional/local NGOs working on the prevention of (and response to) child sexual abuse.

She also worked on a national project initiated by the Ministry of Women and Child Development in the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences' (NIMHANS) Child Psychiatry department in which her role was training Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) members on integration of psychosocial care with child protection.

At Child Rights and You (CRY) she worked with the twin Telugu states in building partnerships and grant management and designed life skills modules for child and adolescent collectives. She also led a national project focused on child participation to gather their voices on education.

She conducted workshops on Gender, life skills, child protection in the context of psychosocial health for teachers, child protection officers, police personnel, civil society representatives, corporates and others who worked closely with vulnerable children.

 Her major consulting areas of specialty are grant management, design and development of child-centric initiatives, capacity enhancement, experiential education, life skills promotion, child participation, programme assessments and gender-sensitive approaches to interventions in the areas of child protection.