From witnessing displacement in their communities to working inside classrooms, Sangeeta Zombade and Rohit Kumar are building schools where children’s wellbeing is treated as essential to learning. For Sangeeta and Rohit, the journey towards reimagining education began from two very different places.
Sangeeta’s understanding came from experiencing displacement herself. Rohit began inside a classroom he entered as a volunteer while working as a software engineer.
Their paths eventually converged around a shared belief: schools must become spaces where children feel seen, heard and valued.
Today, as part of the leadership at Apni Shala Foundation, they are working to transform educational institutions into wellbeing-focused learning spaces.
Sangeeta: From Displacement To Community Action
In 2007, when Sangeeta was 18, she and her family were relocated under Mumbai’s Slum Rehabilitation Act. Through a lottery system, families were moved into unfamiliar high-rise buildings, often without adequate consideration for family size, livelihoods or access to essential services.
The relocation disrupted everyday life. Schools and hospitals became harder to reach, long commutes created new difficulties and local schools struggled to accommodate additional students. Overcrowding contributed to dropouts, while poor sanitation, illness, addiction and disrupted livelihoods affected the wider community. But Sangeeta also saw communities respond.
People began organising and taking collective action, and she became part of that effort. The experience left her with questions about why communities were not more involved in decisions that fundamentally affected their lives.
Her journey into education began in 2006, when she started teaching at Akanksha’s learning centre-model. Over time, she worked with young children, alumni and youth groups, while taking on responsibilities in service learning and programme operations.
Having grown up in Mankhurd, she understood how poverty could shape a child’s educational experience. She began placing student wellbeing and psychosocial safety at the centre of her work. She also realised that education could not be separated from community.
In her neighbourhood, she formed Prayatna – Ek Koshish, bringing adolescents together to clean shared spaces, support families and rebuild community through mural painting and street plays. During COVID-19, the volunteers mobilised to provide food, ration, medicines and other essentials. The group continues to come together around community needs.
Rohit: From Software Engineering To The Classroom
Rohit’s entry into education began while he was working in the corporate world. After completing his education in software engineering from BIT Ranchi and Somaiya Institute of Management and Research, he joined Tata Consultancy Services as a software engineer.
Through TCS Maitree, he began volunteering at a school in Sion, Mumbai, on Sundays. The experience changed his understanding of meaningful work.
When he was offered an opportunity to move abroad for a conventional corporate role, he realised that the classroom had become the most fulfilling part of his week. Financial responsibilities meant he could not make an immediate transition, so he moved into Corporate Maitree within TCS.
Working with schools in different settings exposed him to challenges that went beyond individual classrooms systemic exclusion, limited resources, bullying and inadequate emotional support.
Wanting to understand these issues more deeply, Rohit pursued a second Master’s degree in Education from TISS. In 2011, he moved into the social sector full-time.
His experiences with The Akanksha Foundation, American School of Bombay, the SEED Project and Apni Shala shaped his belief that young people’s voices and experiences must be central to building an equitable education system.
Two Journeys, One Vision
Sangeeta and Rohit eventually found themselves working towards the same question: what would it take to create schools where children could thrive academically while also feeling emotionally safe and supported?Together with Amrita and the wider team, they began building that vision through a school in Lallubhai Compound in 2017.
What started in one room evolved through collaborations and conversations, bringing academic development together with social-emotional learning, wellbeing and trauma-informed education. For Sangeeta, this work extended the community-centred approach she had developed over years.
For Rohit, it reflected his growing conviction that schools can either reproduce existing inequalities or become places that empower young people.
Today, the school serves the community while also functioning as a model for other public and private schools. In 2022, it was identified among the Top 10 global schools by the Global Schools Prizes in the Community Collaboration category.
Making Wellbeing Central ToPart Of Education
Apni Shala’s strategic intent is “To transform educational institutions to become wellbeing-focused learning spaces.”
For Sangeeta and Rohit, transformation is not simply about introducing another programme into a school. It involves changes in mindsets, practices, culture and systems from school leadership and teacher development to student leadership, parent engagement and relationships with governance bodies.
Social-emotional learning lies at the heart of this approach. It focuses on nurturing cognitive, emotional and behavioural wellbeing while creating compassionate and inclusive ecosystems for learners.
The Challenge Of Scaling Relationships
One of their biggest challenges is the development sector’s pressure to demonstrate scale. While some interventions can be standardized, Sangeeta and Rohit believe areas such as community mental health and social-emotional development require patience, context and long-term relationships.
Over the past thirteenfive years, Apni Shala has examined how it can respond to the demand for scale without reducing community work to standardised modules.
They also encourage partners to engage directly with students, educators and caregivers to understand the realities behind the work. Their learning has been clear: if social-emotional development is relational, building organisations and systems must be relational too.
From Classrooms To Systems
Their vision now extends beyond one school.Apni Shala is working with the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, Mira Bhayandar Municipal Corporation and other low-income schools to support at least 30 schools in moving towards care-based education by 2029.
It is also developing Khoj, a K-10 model government school integrating academic and socio-emotional learning, while working to influence local governments to implement SEL and wellbeing-focused practices outlined in the National Education Policy.
The Logical Indian Perspective
Sangeeta and Rohit arrived at social change through different doors. Sangeeta witnessed what happens when communities are uprooted without enough voice in decisions affecting their lives.
Rohit discovered, through a Sunday classroom, that education could become more meaningful than the corporate path he had initially chosen. Their experiences have now converged around a common purpose: to make wellbeing an essential part of education.
For them, high-quality education should be a constitutional right, not a luxury or charity. Their work seeks to create schools that respond not only to what children need academically, but also to what they need emotionally and socially.
Their journey is a reminder that transforming education does not begin only with policies or infrastructure. Sometimes, it begins with listening to a community, entering a classroom and asking a simple question:
What would it take for every child to feel seen, heard and valued?
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