Varun Shrivastava

Varun Shrivastava (born 5 November 1986) is an Indian Social Reformer focused on reengineering the Indian education system. Time and again, he has pressed for equity and accessibility of education with relevant authorities, a cause espoused by his brainchild, UPAY NGO. He is an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur, a premier education institute in India. Shrivastava has received several awards including the prestigious "Young Alumni Achiever Award" conferred upon him by his Alma Mater.

Varun Shrivastava
UPAY NGO & NTPC LTD
Personal details
NationalityIndian
ResidenceDelhi
Alma materIIT Kharagpur
ProfessionSocial Activist, Engineer
AwardsJiyo dil se awards

Young Alumni Achiever's Award

Maitry Gaurav award
Websitewww.upay.org.in

Varun Shrivastava is working with NTPC Limited, a Maharatna PSU in India as a Manager. He is the founder of UPAY(Under Privileged Advancement by Youth)[1], a non-profit organization working for underprivileged children. He pioneered the concept of footpathshala through this organization. It aims to replace begging bowls with books and bring schools to those who can’t reach school. This novel concept started from a small village Mouda has propagated in 7 different cities of the country with the 38 education centres today. Its reach has been extended to around 2000 children, bringing them out of the vicious cycle of begging.

Alongside he also came up with an idea to make the families of these children self-sustainable and hence, came up with the concept of sabkasaman.com, an online e-commerce portal that would serve as a platform for these people to sell their hand made things.[2]

Early life

Varun was born in an agricultural family in small village Shahjahanpur of Jhansi District, UP.  He started his schooling from a primary school in his village and later moved to Chirgaon, to complete his secondary school education from Saraswati Vidya Mandir, Chirgaon. His mother, a homemaker, was a lady rich of values. He says that values and morals that were imparted to him as a child helped him become what he is today. Shrivastava was deeply moved by the predicament of children begging at traffic signals. Eventually, this moment of pathos gave him the impetus to start a movement that envisions equitable education for every child.

Spreading education

He is an IIT Kharagpur Alumni.[3][4] working as a manager at a power sector company, NTPC Ltd. He is well known for his notable work of bringing street children into the mainstream.[5][4] He is the Founder of UPAY (Under Privileged Advancement by Youth),[6][4] Which is Providing free of cost education to 1700 Under Privileged Children at 40 different centers across the country. He is also the founder of sabkasaman.com, an E-Commerce non-profit portal which provides an online market to poor artisans. He is popularly known as a Man, turning Footpaths into School,[7][4] who has started a famous street to school campaign in many cities. Times of India referred him as a Big Brother to street kids. He has been considered among top 10 ordinary Indians[8][4] doing extraordinary things by Lokmat samachar and many other social media groups.[9][4] He has inspired hundreds of youth from different backgrounds like doctors, engineers, college students and teachers to take up the street children cause and given them a motto of Reach & Teach underprivileged children.[10][4] He is trying to replace begging bowls in the hands of street children by books.[11]

Including Shrivastava, all the volunteers are working professionals who contribute after their office commitments. He got deeply hurt by the condition of poor street children by seeing them every day begging at traffic signals. He decided to bring these left-behind children into the mainstream with the powerful tool of education.[12] He started one of the unique initiative called Footpathshala for the street children in October 2015. It's an open school which runs at footpaths and provides basic education to street children.[13]

Shrivastava and his team are working for achieving the dream that "one day will come when not a single child will sleep hungry at footpaths when every child will get ready in the morning to go to school not to some dhaba or restaurant for cleaning the utensils, not to some traffic signals for begging and not to some street for picking up the rags".[14]

He has started to get recognition for his work and many volunteers got inspired by him and they joined his movement. Now Footpathshaala is running in Nagpur, Pune, Gurugram, Delhi, Noida, Bangalore and Mouda. Hundreds of poor children are getting a basic education and then 30% of them got enrolled in schools.[15]

Relief work during Nepal earthquake

When a tragic earthquake struck in Nepal. He led the team of 16 members for carrying out the relief work in mountains. college students and working professionals came forward to join him in this mission. they have set up a relief camp for 1 week at Nepal.

Awards and Honours

1. Jiyo dil Se award season IV by 94.3 my FM.[16]

2.Quest For excellence 2013[17] by Power HR forum.[18]

3. Maitri Gaurav Award[19] 2016.[20]

4.Samaj Bhusan Award by bahuuddesiye Saskratik Mandal Nagpur.

5.Central India Achiever Award by GPS Global PAORAMA Showcase.[21]

6. Young Achiever Award by Sangani Foundation.

7. Manviyata Puruskar by NTPC Mouda

8. LOKMATA SAMAJIK SANSTHA PURASKAR by LOKMATA SUMATITAI SMRUTI PRATISHTHAN.[22]

9. Samaj Sevi Award by Vidarbha Jyeshth Nagrik Mahamandal.

10. NGO Excellence Award by World CSR Day.

11. Young Alumni Achiever's Award by IIT Kharagpur (August 2018)

12. Global Nagpur Award 2018 in the field of Social venture by Nagpur First.

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References
  1. "About UPAY NGO | Non-Profit Organisation". Retrieved 31 July 2020.
  2. "SabkaSaman – Crafting Dreams and Happiness". Retrieved 31 July 2020.
  3. "Meet IITian Varun Shrivastava who teaches slum children". Retrieved 21 August 2016.
  4. "भेदभाव रहित हो शिक्षा, इसलिए हमने निकाला है ये 'उपाय'".
  5. "The Story Of Varun Shrivastava, From IIT To Teaching Slum Children". 13 January 2016. Retrieved 21 August 2016.
  6. "Success-Story of UPAY: Educare of Underpriviledged". nagpurtoday.in. Retrieved 21 August 2016.
  7. "The Story Of Varun Shrivastava, From IIT To Teaching Slum Children". Fresh Tale. 14 January 2016. Retrieved 21 August 2016.
  8. "10 Inspiring Ordinary Indians Who Are Doing Something Extraordinary". Retrieved 21 August 2016.
  9. Mishra, Shekhar (18 January 2016). "10 Inspiring Ordinary Indians Who Did Extraordinary Things". Retrieved 21 August 2016.
  10. "Ek UPAY, a solution". 21 July 2013. Retrieved 21 August 2016.
  11. "UPAY aiming to replace begging bowls with books through footpath shala". Times of India. Retrieved 21 August 2016.
  12. Parul Khare (29 March 2015), News Nations TV 's "Khabar Achhi hai program" about Footpath shala, An UPAY Initiative., retrieved 21 August 2016
  13. "Inspiring Young India". Retrieved 21 August 2016 – via Facebook.
  14. Varun Shrivastava (13 February 2016), UDAAN Shiksha Ki...A story of UPAY, retrieved 21 August 2016
  15. Parul Khare (3 May 2015), UPAY's Footpathshala at Sahara Samay National TV..., retrieved 21 August 2016
  16. Parul Khare (2 June 2016), jiyo dil se awards 2016 by 94.3 My FM, retrieved 21 August 2016
  17. "SJVN Ltd : SJVN Hosted Power HR Forum Competition Quest for Excellence". 4-Tradersaccess-date=2016-08-21.
  18. shrivastava, varun. "Quest FOr excellence Award 2013" (PDF). Power Hr forum.
  19. "Maitree Gaurav Puraskar for Dr Dangre - Times of India". The Times of India. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
  20. "Keep tradition of serving society alive: Bhagwat - Times of India". The Times of India. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
  21. "Travel News - Global Panorama Showcase: Breaking Records & Crossing Boundaries | TravelBiz Monitor". www.travelbizmonitor.com. Retrieved 18 December 2017.
  22. "Each person should work as a 'trustee' in life: Purohit". thehitavada.com. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
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