Sakshi Srivastava Is Helping Children Return to School
From teaching children in a park in Ghaziabad to building Anubhuti, Sakshi Srivastava is working with communities to help children who have dropped out or never entered school return to formal education.
Abhinav Kumar
10/7/2026
Sakshi Srivastava Is Helping Children Return to School
For Sakshi Srivastava, education was once something her own family had to fight for. She grew up in Jalalabad in Uttar Pradesh's Shahjahanpur district, where continuing education was not always considered a priority for girls. Her father, however, insisted that his daughters continue studying. Sakshi eventually moved to Delhi and studied at Miranda House, an experience that changed how she viewed education and the opportunities it could create.
Years later, that experience would become the foundation of her work with children who had been denied similar opportunities.
What brought Sakshi to this work?
Her turning point came after she encountered two children eating discarded food from a dustbin.
The experience led her to spend more time speaking with children and their families. She found that some children had never enrolled in school, while others had dropped out before completing their education.
She initially began teaching around 15 to 30 children with the help of NCC and NSS volunteers in Majnu Ka Tila, Delhi. After moving to Ghaziabad, she began teaching children from a nearby settlement in a local park. The group gradually grew to around 150 children.
Teaching so many children on her own was not sustainable. Sakshi began looking for ways to understand the education system and build something that could work beyond a single classroom.
She later worked with organisations including Goonj, became a Gandhi Fellow and joined the Chief Minister's Good Governance Associates fellowship. These experiences gave her a broader understanding of communities, public systems and the barriers that keep children away from education.
Building Anubhuti around the children who were being left behind
In 2016, Sakshi founded Anubhuti, a nonprofit focused on children facing barriers to formal education.
The organisation works with communities where poverty, child labour, migration and gender-related responsibilities can contribute to children leaving school or never enrolling in the first place. Its approach is centred on working with communities rather than simply placing children in classrooms.
By 2020, Sakshi had begun working on the initiative full-time. One of its key programmes, the Bridge Fellowship, developed local young people as education leaders who could identify children outside the school system, work with their families and help them enter or return to government schools.
Teach For India also identifies Sakshi as a TFIx leader and founder of Anubhuti. Its current profile says her Bridge Fellowship work in Haryana has mobilised 412 local youth leaders who work to bring children back into formal education.
Returning to school is only the first step
One of the lessons from Anubhuti's work was that getting a child enrolled was not enough.
The organisation found that some children who had returned to school later dropped out again. Sakshi and her team began looking more closely at what happened after enrolment.
According to The Logical Indian's October 2026 report, the organisation found that some returning students felt excluded in classrooms and were sometimes treated differently because they had previously dropped out. This led Anubhuti to work with government school teachers on socio-emotional learning and classroom environments.
The organisation's work therefore extends beyond admission. It involves families, teachers, local youth and communities, with the aim of helping children remain connected to education.
A grassroots model built around local communities
Anubhuti's programmes now include the Bridge Fellowship, EduSEL and Hope School. The organisation works across communities in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, including rural areas and urban settlements.
The organisation says its work has reached large numbers of children and teachers over the years. The Logical Indian reported in October 2026 that Anubhuti was working with around 12,000 out-of-school and dropout children and around 200 local youth, while its wider programmes had reached many more people.
The organisation itself describes its early work as beginning with just 30 children in the slums of Ghaziabad. Over time, that small classroom in a park developed into a larger community-based education effort.
For Sakshi, the work has increasingly centred on building local leadership rather than depending entirely on professionals coming from outside.
That approach matters in places where finding trained people willing to relocate can be difficult. Local youth already understand the language, families and social realities of their communities, making them better placed to build trust with children and parents.
The work continues at the grassroots
Sakshi's journey has moved from a small classroom in a Ghaziabad park to an organisation working across communities in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.
The central challenge remains the same: helping children who have been pushed outside the education system find a way back in, and making sure returning to school does not become another short-lived intervention.
Her work through Anubhuti is built around that longer process, bringing together children, families, teachers and young people from the communities themselves.
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