Raj Kumar Gope’s studied rural development, and over the years built his knowledge and capacity in public health and nutritional epidemiology He completed his studies from St. Xavier’s college Ranchi; Xavier Institute of Social Services (XISS), Ranchi and Indian Institute of Public health (IIPH), Delhi. He is also a leadership fellow of cohort II of Social Impact Leadership Programme (DSILP-2) run by DASRA in collaboration with Harvard Business Publishing. He is trained in ‘Appreciative Inquiry’. He brings 18 years of rich and diverse experience in development sector and is proud member of ‘Ekjut’, a civil society organization. His association with Ekjut is over 13 years and has been a key member in building the organization which started working in three districts and its being replicated to over 100 thousand villages by state governments, civil society organisations and development partners. He has co-authored several papers published in high impact international journals along with colleagues from Ekjut and its partnering organizations like University college of London, UNICEF and Public Health foundation of India.
Currently he is leading the state-wide scaling up of ‘Participatory Learning and Action(PLA)’ initiative in Jharkhand. This initiative is covering all 32000 villages of state of Jharkhand and being implemented through Government of Jharkhand. He is also one among three Directors of ‘Ekjut Management Consultancy Pvt. Ltd.’, a company working independent of Ekjut in providing capacity building support; undertaking independent studies and providing technical support to organisations in the area of community mobilization. He is a firm believer of ‘Team Work’ and is ‘Building Teams’ for building healthier communities.