Empowering Communities, Transforming Lives

Board of Directors

Mini Kurup
Chairman

Mini Kurup, Chairman

Mini Kurup, Chairman, has one postgraduate diploma in rural development from the Xavier Institute of Social Service and another in human resource development from the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). She is presently a district facilitator for UNICEF’s GOI-UN Joint Program on Convergence. Mini successfully completed a Visionary Leadership Program fellowship in population and development supported by the Packard Foundation and organized by the International Council on Management of Population Programmes (ICOMP) in Malaysia. She also completed a capacity-building training program for development facilitators organized by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Sponsored by UNICEF, India, Mini visited the largest women’s cooperative of northern Japan to present and disseminate strategies of convergent community action, and its implementation and impact in India.

Manoj K. Verma
Director

Manoj K. Verma, Director

Manoj K. Verma, Director, received his postgraduate diploma in rural development and management from the Xavier Institute of Social Service, Ranchi. He earned fellowship at the Institute of Social Studies, Dan Hague, the Netherlands. He also received training on social development and leadership at prestigious international institutions, including International Livestock Research Institute, Addis Ababa & the University of California, Santa Cruz. He began his career in 1990 as a program officer in a church-based organization responsible for building capacity building of its partner agencies in the northern Indian states. Thereafter, Joined Economic Development Associate, a Gurgaon based consultancy firm, working from Bihar. In 1993, Manoj founded IDF with a team of professionals who shared his vision of improving the quality of life of the most deprived sections of the community. He manages all aspects of IDF.

Mahendra Pr. Suman
Deputy Director

Mahendra Pr. Suman, Deputy Director

Mahendra Pr. Suman, Deputy Director, is a social activist and freelance professional in the social development, academic, and media fields. While a graduate student at Patna College in 1982, he abandoned his formal studies to join a radical left-wing movement as a full-time professional activist, but developed serious ideological differences with the movement in the 1990s and moved away from hardcore political activism to social and journalistic engagement. A core member of the editorial board of Sahyatri, a development-focused Hindi quarterly publication, for nearly eight years, Mahendra has expertise in documentation, translation, data analysis, and research writing. He has also conducted research on health and education policy and consults on a range of development issues. Mahendra writes regularly on contemporary issues and is presently working on a book.

Niraj Kr. Sinha
Treasurer

Niraj Kr. Sinha, Treasurer

Niraj Kr. Sinha, Treasurer, received his bachelor’s degree in 1989. In 1990 he joined MECONS, a Ranchi-based firm of consulting engineers and contractors, as an accountant, and in 1992 became an audit assistant at M/s Pravin Sinha & Associates in Ranchi. In 1995, after completing an ICWAI (Inter), he joined IDF as executive in charge of finance and administration.

Babul Prasad
Executive Committee

Babul Prasad, Executive Committee

Babul Prasad, Executive Committee, has a bachelor’s degree in English and an MBA in marketing from the Indian Institute of Business Management, Patna. He also completed a one-year fellowship at the University of Washington, Seattle. After working in the corporate sector for two years, in 1992 he joined Economic Development Associates, a Gurgaon-based consultancy, working from Bihar. The following year he and seven other professionals founded IDF to realize his vision of professionalizing Bihar’s social development sector. Babul is presently devoting his time to the Social Development Institute (SDI), IDF’s training wing, and he maintains professional connections with many other local, national, and international social development organizations. He is also a core member of the North Bihar Information Resource and Advocacy Forum. Babul is a permanent member of the Population Association of America and a visiting faculty member at Patna University’s Department of Rural Management.

Kiran Sinha
Executive Committee

Kiran Sinha, Executive Committee

Kiran Sinha, Executive Committee, graduated from Magadh University in 1993 with an honours degree in sociology. Her hobbies are teaching to the children and reading books. She has keen interest in social development -especially for well being of children, education, gender equity and child conseling. She also plans to open a school where children from deprived section get free education and develop education & communication materials related to joyful learnings. Her goal is to work for the holistic development of underprivileged members of Indian society.

Ankita Kashyap
Executive Committee

Ankita Kashyap, Executive Committee

Ankita Kashyap, Executive Committee, has a master’s degree in Social Work (Gold Medallist) with a diverse experience of more than 14 years in Corporate & Development Sector. With experience of being a young corporate professional  for seven years in a very thrilling and challenging marketing & Communications profile of a multinational, she followed her heart and changed career path to Social Work, with a vision to make a difference in the lives of the underprivileged and the vulnerable sections of society. She has gained expertise in Capacity Building- Training & Hand Hold Support, Local Governance & Gender issues while working with IDF and projects of Department of Panchayati Raj and Department of Social Welfare, Government of Bihar.