About Champaran Foundation
A rural knowledge, leadership, and livelihood organisation founded in 2017 on the centenary of the Champaran Satyagraha. Relaunching in 2026 with a focused mandate across the Champaran region of Bihar.
Our story
Champaran Foundation was established in 2017 on the centenary of the Champaran Satyagraha. The Foundation was founded with a simple proposition. Champaran should not remain only a memory of India's freedom struggle. It should become a living point of rural service in a new century.
For nine years between 2017 and 2026, the Foundation worked across Bihar in different forms. We supported education initiatives, encouraged digital awareness, contributed to community projects, participated in civic conversations, and explored ways of connecting knowledge with local leadership.
The work was earnest. The structure needed to become stronger.
In 2026, we made an organisational decision to relaunch. The relaunch reflects three commitments. First, to do fewer things and do them well. Second, to focus on the Champaran region where the Foundation has the deepest roots. Third, to operate as a transparent institution that can be partnered with, audited, and held accountable.
Our three programs, Rural Libraries, Youth Leadership, and Artisan Livelihoods, were chosen after listening to local needs. Each program addresses a real gap that exists in villages, schools, families, and local economies. None of them is designed for presentation alone.
The Foundation is being strengthened as a non-profit institution with a small core team in Champaran and a wider network of field coordinators, local librarians, trainers, volunteers, advisors, and partner organisations.
We are not affiliated with any political party, religious organisation, or government body. We accept support from CSR partners, philanthropic foundations, individual donors, development institutions, and like-minded citizens. We disclose institutional funders on our Governance page.
Founder
Shuja Gandhi
Champaran Foundation was founded by Shuja Gandhi, a public worker, writer, and civic organiser from Champaran, Bihar.
Shuja Gandhi's work has focused on rural development, leadership, public communication, community mobilisation, and civic platforms. His interest in Champaran Foundation comes from a simple conviction: the region that gave India one of its most important moral experiments must also produce serious institutions for the future.
Through Champaran Foundation, he seeks to build a disciplined, transparent, and long-term rural development platform rooted in knowledge, dignity, livelihood, and leadership.
The Foundation is not designed as a personal project. It is being built as an institution, with governance, partners, advisors, field teams, and community ownership.
Trustees and advisors
The Foundation is in the process of constituting its formal Board of Trustees and Advisory Council for the relaunch phase. Final details will be published on the Governance page.
Why Champaran
Champaran is the region that gave the Foundation its name. It would be inconsistent to operate without returning to this geography.
But the choice is not sentimental alone. Champaran is large, historically significant, and developmentally important. It includes East Champaran and West Champaran, together forming one of Bihar's most important rural regions.
The region carries the memory of the 1917 Satyagraha. It also carries present-day challenges around education, livelihoods, youth opportunity, women's participation, rural infrastructure, migration, and access to reliable knowledge.
Champaran is also changing. Pilgrimage circuits, agricultural shifts, road connectivity, digital access, migration remittances, and local enterprise are creating new possibilities. The Foundation wants to work at this intersection: memory and modernity, history and livelihood, knowledge and local leadership.
For the first phase of the relaunch, the Foundation will work in selected blocks across East Champaran and West Champaran. The initial geography may include Kesariya, Motihari, Areraj, Sugauli, Bettiah, Narkatiaganj, Bagaha, and Ramnagar, subject to partner support and field readiness.