Mr. Vikas Sawant has completed his Master’s Degree in Social Work (MSW) from Nirmala Niketan College of Social Work, Mumbai and has more than 23 years of experience of working with children and on issues related to Child Rights. He has developed and conducted many training programs with different groups including government officials and NGO staff. Networking and working with governmental systems is his forte. He has worked closely with the state governments in Maharashtra, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Jharkhand and Delhi on issues related to the Rescue and Restoration of working children. His expertise and knowledge on laws related to children led him to develop a model for the rescue and restoration of working children which was appreciated by the Gujarat High Court and then adopted by all the Indian states. He has also created many other models related to the protection of Child Rights which have been adopted by the Governments both at the State and the Centre. Mr. Sawant has been invited to participate in working committee of 11 five-year plan of India and different committees of state government as a Child Rights expert. He was also a member of the Mumbai Child Welfare Committee (CWC) from 2009 to 2011. He is currently working with UNICEF as a State Consultant on Child Protection.

Dr. Yamini Suvarna completed her PhD on provisions for children with special educational needs from Coventry University (UK) in 2000 and has been working with children and on children’s issues for nearly 25 years now. Her areas of expertise include training, qualitative research and documentation. She has been one of the lead investigators in over ten research projects on children and their issues. She has developed and conducted training programmes for various groups like children, adolescents, parents, teachers, social work professionals and staff of shelter homes for minor girls and women in Mumbai. She has also conducted courses on qualitative research methods and presented papers at international conferences. She is currently on the Editorial Board for the Research Reach, the journal of the College of Home Science, Nirmala Niketan. She has been part of an initiative by the UGC to make quality course materials (in social work) accessible online to all students across the country. She currently works as an M&E and Documentation Expert on child protection with UNICEF.