About us
Who we are
Navyug Sanskriti Foundation (NSF) is a grassroots non-profit working with one of East Delhi's most underserved communities - the migrant settlements along the Yamuna floodplain. Most families are first- and second-generation migrants from rural Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Haryana.
Yamuna Khadar
Yamuna Khadar is the stretch of the Yamuna floodplain beside Mayur Vihar Phase-I and Chilla Khadar. Most families here farm vegetables and nursery plants on leased land, or do daily-wage and domestic work (India Water Portal, 2025). Because the floodplain allows no permanent construction, homes are jhuggis of tarpaulin and bamboo (Maktoob, 2024).
Floods (July 2023, August–September 2025) regularly push families into roadside relief camps, and DDA demolition drives (July 2024, April 2025, September 2026) have repeatedly cleared homes, farms, and learning spaces. Each of these moves is a point where a child's schooling can stop.
Mission
Our mission: To ensure that children in rural-urban migrant families successfully complete their education, build resilience in the face of frequent pressures to drop out, and go on to find stable work.
The problem we focus on
In Yamuna Khadar, some primary causes of school dropouts are:
- Arriving in Delhi: families moving from villages often lack the address proof and other documents urban schools require, so children who were studying in the village never enrol in the city.
- Sudden returns: when floods, demolitions, or other crises push families back to the village, children leave school mid-year and often don't go back.
- Income pressure: children are needed to earn or help at home.
Once a child has fallen behind, getting back in is hard. See how we work →
Our story
Vikram Singh came to Delhi from his village in Uttar Pradesh in 2013 to study. He lived in the jhuggis in Mayur Vihar, completing a B.A. at Delhi University while living there, and later a B.Ed. and an M.A. through IGNOU.
Living in the jhuggis, he saw two things. First, how many children had dropped out of school, with no clear way back in and little motivation to study; most were expected to help their parents with field work. Second, the potential of open schooling (NIOS) as a route back in. Alongside his own studies, he began teaching children for free, and went on to help run Vanphool Pathshala, a free school for children in Yamuna Khadar, which by 2020 was running classes under the flyover and reaching nearly 300 children. Shrishti Verma, now our co-founder, taught there with him.
In 2020, during the Covid-19 lockdown, Mihir Bhaskar, then working in data and public policy research, was volunteering to match funds with relief efforts on the ground and got in touch with Vikram. This started a collaboration on short-term needs (storm-relief tarpaulins, mosquito nets before the monsoon, ration support) and on longer-term planning, including a census of every household to understand the community and shape interventions.
These efforts kept being interrupted. Floods displaced families, and DDA demolition drives repeatedly cleared the settlements (Maktoob, 2024; Maktoob, 2026). In 2023, Vanphool Pathshala was demolished by the Public Works Department ("Rising from the rubble", The Patriot, 2023). It became clear the work needed a stable centre close to the community, where children can come to learn and families can get help with documentation, and a more systematic way of running it.
Navyug Sanskriti Foundation was registered in December 2024 to do this, and Mihir brought in Smitha Cunigal as it took shape. Vikram brings deep ties to the community and years of teaching its children; Shrishti handles the legal and documentation work; Mihir and Smitha bring experience in program design, data collection, and evaluation, and in connecting this work to wider research and policy. The foundation is a way to systematise, fund, and share the work Vikram has been doing for over a decade.
Legal & registration status
- Registration
- Public Charitable Trust under the Indian Trusts Act, 1882 — Registration No. 2024/4/IV/2147, registered 26 December 2024, Delhi
- PAN
- AAETN8217A
- 12A
- Income-tax exemption for the Trust (provisional) — Unique Registration No. AAETN8217AE20251, granted 10 May 2025, valid AY 2026-27 to AY 2028-29
- 80G
- Tax deduction for Indian donors (provisional) — Unique Registration No. AAETN8217AF20251, granted 10 May 2025, valid AY 2026-27 to AY 2028-29
- CSR-1
- Eligible to receive corporate CSR funding — Registration No. CSR00113586, dated 27 June 2026
- NGO Darpan
- DL/2025/0575004, registered 24 March 2025
- Registered office
- 725/1, First Floor, Jheel Khuranja, Krishna Nagar, Govind Pura, Shahdara, East Delhi, Delhi – 110051