Jyoti Sharma

Ms. Sharma has been involved in both Urban and Rural poverty and other interrelated development issues. She has worked on the issues of Urban Poverty and Governance, Urban Homeless (Street Children), Child Rights (Education), Campaign on Violence Against Girls in Schools, the Unorganised Sector (eg. Rag Pickers, Domestic Workers, Construction Workers), Agricultural Bonded Labour, Psychosocial counseling and conflict resolution in the Kashmir Valley, etc. Furthermore, she had coordinated an action research on the issues of women prisoners in Tihar Jail, status of Street and Working Children in Delhi and have undertaken a Development Audit of World Bank District Poverty Initiative Project (DPIP) in Rajasthan as an Associate Researcher. She had also been involved in Disaster Management/Emergencies, such as the Super Cyclone in Orissa (1999), the Gujarat Earthquake (2001), Orissa Floods (2001), the Kashmir project and recent Tsunami relief and reconstruction programme in Tamil Nadu.

Upon completing her MSW, she was recruited by ActionAid India for their yearlong Development Trainee Fellowship, where she gained fresh insights to the Rights Based Approach to development and empowerment, where gender equity, people participation, entitlements and empowering processes were cross cutting issues. The opportunity led her to work on a variety of issue at various levels right from the grass-root experiential exposures, to programme planning, implementation and participatory reflections, to policy level advocacy, etc. She had tremendous scope to learn from numerous voluntary sector and community based organizations their differing styles of leadership and functioning.

Thereafter, she was offered placement with ActionAid India’s Delhi Regional Office as a Programme Officer. Her responsibilities ranged from supporting voluntary organization in implementing development initiatives and project (including financial) management, building capacities and perspective of project teams, partner agencies and communities, coordinating micro level action research, conducting participatory reviews and reflections, regular interface with partner communities, etc.