Turning Setbacks into Comebacks: Nitasha Thapar’s Mission to Make Learning Accessible for Women
In India, where 40% of girls between fifteen and eighteen are already out of school, the pandemic threatened to erase in months what took decades to build. UNESCO estimates that every year, 12 million girls are at risk of dropping out, as young as at the age of fifteen. Behind those numbers are millions of interrupted lives, folded too early into the obligations of adulthood: child marriage, household chores, wage labor. The pandemic threatened to worsen an already fragile pipeline. Years of incremental progress could be erased in months.
This is the terrain on which philanthropy must choose its courage.
To look at numbers like these and not flinch, not default to safer, smaller interventions, requires a particular kind of resolve. It requires anyone committed to addressing the challenge, to first acknowledge that it is not an “education issue” alone. It is the dense intersection of poverty, patriarchy, aspiration, safety, and social norms.
For Nitasha Thapar, her journey into philanthropy and the work of the Kashvi Trust, reflects a deeply personal reckoning with these numbers, and a refusal to accept that where a girl is born should determine how small her life must be. Thus, open closer inspection, what stands out in Kashvi Trust’s approach and impact so far, is the what, and the how. Nitasha started the organization in Jharkhand, and she shares about the choice: “Childhood here often ends abruptly. Forty-one percent of girls marry before eighteen. Seasonal migration pulls families apart. Trafficking networks exploit economic hardship, pushing young women into distant domestic work. In this context, asking families to let their daughters return to learning meant more than offering education.”
It meant challenging fears and reimagining what safety and possibility could look like. It is therefore inspiring to see how Kashvi's work has evolved with this recognition. “Keeping girls in school is as much about community trust as it is about classrooms; as much about negotiating with families as it is about building infrastructure; as much about safety, mentorship, and aspiration as it is about textbooks.”
The Questions That Built Kashvi: Nitasha Thapar’s Journey
Nitasha’s path into philanthropy began with curiosity and a designer’s instinct to notice when things did not fit. Her first encounter with rural India came through pro bono work at the Crafts Museum in Delhi, where she met women artisans, whose talent remained pinned to the margins of the economy. Their struggles were systemic, but the solutions around them often failed to recognize their lived realities. “Here was a whole sector brimming with talent yet deeply underserved,” she recalls. This experience planted the question that would shape her life’s work. How could design thinking and philanthropy honor dignity rather than just check efficiency boxes?
When she began working with her family’s CSR trust, Nitasha realized early on that even thoughtful programs could fail when they overlooked the rhythm of women’s lives. Unsafe routes to school, daily survival shaped by care work, wage labour, social scrutiny, and trust that returned slowly if broken made all the difference.
Questions guided her learning. Why were girls not returning to school? What did safety mean in villages where men migrated for work? How did women structure their days? Who made decisions and who was allowed to dream? Listening to local volunteers, fieldworkers, and leaders taught her the value of working with communities rather than around them. Solutions had to grow from lived experiences. These insights became the foundation of Kashvi Trust.
A community woman handcrafting leaf plates—an everyday livelihood practice that reflects local knowledge, resilience, and self-reliance
“The way lives change over time is what fuels us at Kashvi. Every small step a woman takes toward learning, every time she reclaims a choice, reminds us why this work matters.”
Kashvi Trust’s sustained investment is expanding access to learning and unlocking pathways to opportunity for women and girls
Learning to Build, Learning to Listen
Many education initiatives in India focus narrowly on literacy without addressing the realities shaping girls’ lives. Kashvi Trust began by meeting women facing early marriage, childcare, financial stress, and restricted mobility. They saw the cost of literacy without agency. Confidence and choice were the foundation upon which learning had to be built.
The first insights came from a 2017 to 2019 pilot through another organization, revealing the depth of educational discontinuity for adolescent girls and women. The Trust focused on this underserved group. The flagship program began during the COVID-19 pandemic, with operations fully functional in 2021. High dropout rates forced the team to adapt. The original 24-month structure became 18 months to suit mothers and adolescents juggling multiple responsibilities.
In the first year, the team went door to door, speaking with parents, teachers, and girls to understand barriers. They built credibility with panchayats and gram sabhas and improvised solutions. Zoom classes happened where connectivity allowed, printed worksheets were used when it did not, learning kits were hand-delivered, and phone calls were made just to check if girls were safe. These slow, grounded efforts became the blueprint for Kashvi Trust’s approach.
The Kashvi Program expands opportunity, strengthens livelihoods, and enables confident futures for women
Philanthropy as Partnership: With Communities, Against Challenges
Kashvi Trust works to make education accessible across geographies and build employability within communities. Transformation must reach thousands, not dozens, to shift a region’s trajectory. The Trust stays grounded by listening, adapting, and following the rhythm of women’s lives. Its ethos of “turning setbacks into comebacks” capture this approach.
As India moves toward 2047, the sector faces key questions. Will programs continue being built around assumptions or around what women say they need? Kashvi Trust shows that when philanthropy listens, partners with communities, and stays the course, structural gaps begin to close, and the possibility of an India where every girl can learn, earn, and choose becomes real.
Throughout her journey, Nitasha has positioned herself as an enabler of local leadership, of grassroots' wisdom, of girls’ own dreams. She is committed to investing in ecosystems that can engage with the problem of girls’ education in India with courage, imagination and a belief that even when systems fail girls, we do not have to.
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