DR UJWALA SAMANT
Dr Ujwala Samant, director of Learning for Life (LfL) charity, London

Ujwala was born in India and educated in India and America where she gained a doctorate in Social Science. She is the director of Learning for Life (LfL), a UK charity that had lost direction and funding before she took over in 2003. Prior to joining LfL, she was a senior researcher at the National Centre for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy.

Learning for Life is a charity that assists local partners in Afganistan, India and Pakistan to provide education and teacher training to remote areas and impoverished communities. Their main focus is the education of young girls and training women. An example of the much needed work in these countries is catch up programmes for girls under the Taliban, to educating slum children in Lahore. Their work in the UK includes providing primary schools with resources to explore and question racial and ethnic stereotypes.

Through her leadership, LfL re-established relationships with partners and streamlined the programming and approaches to new funders. Due to this she was able to secure the charity's first major grant from the Big Lottery Fund £410,000 and a further Lottery Fund for £765,000. She led a campaign that raised £350,000 for the Pakistan Earthquake Appeal in 2006. Her plans for 2007 are to increase work of the LfL's partners in their three designated countries (India, Afghanistan and Pakistan) as well as breaking new ground through the UK Schools Programme.

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