Somasree Basu

Somasree Basu is currently the Program Manager of Shreeja India, a non-profit CSO working in West Bengal towards empowering women. The organization views sports, mainly football, integrated into education and informed imagination as a powerful vehicle for empowering women and catalyzing social change. The organization’s flagship program Football & Beyond is designed to stop early marriage, school dropouts, trafficking, and violence against women while also contributing toward physical, mental, and social development of underprivileged girls (age group: –5 years –20 years), their families, and young children (4-10 years) from their villages. The program in the last five years has impacted 80 villages, 500+ girls, and 6000 beneficiaries.

Somasree is a social worker and a psychologist by profession and has been working in the development sector for the last ten years. Her focal areas of work have been gender justice, as well as environment and child protection. She also teaches counseling as a guest lecturer at Vidyasagar University, West Bengal, and is a trained Support Person under POCSO Rules 2020. Somasree has previously led developmental projects with the World Bank, UNEP, ECOSOC, India-Bhutan Foundation, PWC, IUCN, Goethe Institute, and other organizations pan South Asia. She is presently working with Govt. of West Bengal, Azim Premji Foundation, Sachin Tendulkar Foundation, Soroptimist International, and The Telegraph Education Foundation. In 2022, she has been recognized as India’s one of the top 9 Mental Health Advocates by Woxsen University, Hyderabad. She is also a trainer who conducts capacity building workshops. Previously, she has conducted training for Shreeja India (in-house), UNICEF, Directorate of Child Rights and Trafficking (DCRT) West Bengal, and Government of Haryana.