Sheela Patel is the director of the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC) that has worked in the Alliance with Mahila Milan and the National Slum Dwellers Federation (and Jockin) since 1986. She is one of the founders of SDI and is now a member of the Global Commission on Adaptation.
Rajesh Tandon is founder-president of the Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) in New Delhi, India. He pioneered participatory research methodologies for empowerment of the excluded and has built capacity of grassroots groups for the past four decades. He is a co-founder of SPARC and continues to serve on its governing board.
Kalpana Sharma is an independent journalist, columnist and author based in Mumbai whose focus has been gender, developmental and environmental issues and the media. She currently writes a regular column on the website Newslaundry. She is the author of Rediscovering Dharavi: stories from Asia's largest slum (Penguin, 2000) and The Silence and the Storm: Narratives of violence against women in India (Aleph, 2019) and has also edited several books.
