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This awareness website is maintained by Ugravedan Foundation. We are committed to empowering community with valuable health knowledge so that they people can live healthier and happier lives, through our Project Powerful Gyaan.
Our focus has been substance addiction as we believe that our society owes it to our youth to caution them about the true consequences of using these substances, so that they don’t get fooled by the misleading propaganda.
We were a part of WHO SEARO’s ‘Meri Pyaari Zindagi’ campaign. This website is the official website of the campaign. The campaign has 10 videos, 10 audio stories and 20 memes to sensitize youth about various aspects related to alcohol addiction in an interesting & engaging way.
Besides these, we have written some blogs and compiled together many other wonderful open-source resources from around the world that will help you protect yourself, your family, and the community around you from these addictive poisons.
Meet The Team
Dr. Dharav Sunil Shah
(Director)
Dharav did his diploma in psychiatry from BJMC, Pune and MD from NIMHANS, Bangalore. He has been working since 13 yrs on empowering youth with adequate knowledge about alcohol & tobacco. He has given more than 460 presentations on this issue, including at 53 medical colleges and various conferences. He conducts workshops on Motivational interviewing & Brief intervention for health professionals.
Other psychological issues he likes spreading awareness on are parenting, life skills, need for Indian women to learn assertiveness, stress management, etc. He loves doing therapy for people dealing with various psychological issues, with special interest in Vaginismus, OCD, alcohol & tobacco addiction, marital therapy, depression, etc.
Dr. Taru Sneh Ramnath Jindal
(Director)
Dr Taru Jindal is an Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, who completed her MS from Mumbai in 2013. After that she worked in Bihar along with ‘Care India’ towards improving quality of maternity services being provided. She was instrumental in transformation of Motihari district hospital from one of the worst to the winner of the Kayakalp Award from GOI. She then worked with ‘Doctors For You’ to start a health centre in remote village of Masarhi, focusing on health of women & malnourished children. Her experiences have been shared in the popular book ‘A Doctor’s experiments in Bihar’.
She is a board certified lactation expert who has conducted more than 42 workshops across the country empowering more than 4000 mothers and health workers with breastfeeding support skills. She was given the lifetime achievement award for this work at LAMBCON 2021.
Suyash Toshniwal
(IT Head & Community Liason Officer)
Suyash has been an active member of social organizations since student days. He chose to use his education in IT for helping the development sector. He has worked with SEARCH in past and currently works with project Aarambh at MGIMS, Sevagram. Based on his rich experience and passion, Suyash contributes towards strategic planning at Ugravedan and establishing community partnerships.
Ms. Meenakshi Alawani
(Psychologist and Life Skills Educator)
Meenakshi has been passionately working for mental health awareness since many years. She has written articles in various magazines and papers and has been counselling people from underprivileged sections through various projects and organisations. She has a rich experience of implementing life skills programme in schools. She is the Founder President, Sahaj Trust, Singhudurg, Maharashtra. ‘Dwij’ puraskar by IPH as a Shubhankar in October 2017 for being Primary Caregiver of younger brother suffering from schizophrenia. In project Powerful Gyaan, she contributes towards our online deaddiction counselling service, life skills intervention and community mobilisation for addiction prevention.