History

SEED (Slum Education and Empowerment Drive) Foundation is the fruit of the drive, vision, tireless efforts, and grit and will of Gauri Bhasin. It was founded in 2004 by Gauri Bhasin along with her husband, Shiv Bhasin, and Sulabha Pathak, with the aim of educating and empowering underprivileged kids from slum areas of Mumbai. It is their firm belief that education is a key requisite for social and economic change in the life of these kids.

It began with teaching 20 odd kids with a group of like-minded individuals, almost a decade ago in an informal way on the pavement and later on in the parking lot of Fairmont building in Hiranandani gardens area. The classes, started by Sanjay Pasricha, were conducted on an informal basis for a few hours every day after regular school hours. Basic education became the agenda for the action group that emerged from this exercise. The target group of this volunteer group was kids who were not being able to cope up with their studies and were falling behind in basic education and extra-curricular activities, due to lack of financial and academic support from their family and very few learning opportunities in their schools.

This after-school program was aimed at bridging the learning gap and igniting the interest of children in education so that their true potential could be realized. Over the years, this informal set up grew into second school for quality education and interpersonal skills development for the kids. In 2014, we expanded the programme and started conducting classes in a municipal school in Powai area. Here, along with the curriculum teaching, extra-curricular activities such as dance, drawing and other arts, computers, English-speaking, guitar, football, etc., were introduced. With the increase in the number of children, a concomitant rise in the number of volunteers and teachers was witnessed. The success stories of children who have been with us since the informal beginnings validated its holistic teaching. Finally in 2014, the charitable society was officially registered as a non-profit organization under the name of SEED Foundation and also received the 80G and 12 A tax exemption certificates by Income Tax department.