Gaurav Girija Shukla is a public relations strategist, who co-founded ‘Sangyaa’ – a corporate communications start up in Raipur, Chhattisgarh. The start up deals with perception management, public relations and media management. An engineering graduate, Gaurav is immensely interested in Hindi literature and organises ‘Kalam Central’, the Raipur chapter of Kalam -- the literary initiative of Prabha Khaitan Foundation.
It was in 2004 when Gaurav’s family embarked on a noble mission of providing affordable and quality education to rural children. The first task at hand was to start a school at their home town Arang, near Raipur. The going was tough, but today, under Abhikalp Foundation, the family is running three schools in rural areas in Arang. These schools are imparting quality education to more than 500 students studying from nursery to 10th standard.
Gaurav has been lending a helping hand to his family since 2004. After completing his graduation in Engineering (Electronics and Telecommunications) in 2008, he realised “technical jobs” were not for him and that education and social work were his true calling.
In the field of education, he has worked with Indus World School, a chain of school run by one of India’s pioneer institutes -- Career Launcher. After gaining some experience, he associated himself with City Montessori School, Lucknow that runs India’s largest chain of CBSE Schools. He also served as a project manager in Council of Global Education, USA, at its country headquarters in Lucknow. He was a part of the Global Shapers Community -- a network of young people driving dialogue, action and change. He was the Global Shaper of the Raipur Hub and worked as a life coach and career counsellor. He has been a member of Junior Chamber International since 2008. Later, he worked as a news anchor with two media organisations – the Zee News network and IBC 24.
All these experiences in diverse fields helped him revisit his original dream; that of doing something revolutionary in the field of education and that's how Abhikalp Foundation came into being.