Founding Chair

Shri Arvind Ojha

Shri Arvind Ojha ji was the Founding Chair of Urmul Seemant Samiti, Bajju (Bikaner), Chief Executive, Urmul Trust, and Chairman of Girls Not Brides, Rajasthan. Often referred to as Guruji by his colleagues and staff, Shri Ojha dedicated over four decades of his life for the empowerment and sustainable growth of disadvantaged vulnerable groups, women and children in Rajasthan and other parts of the country. During his journey, he was involved as an active member in all the 14 organisations of the Urmul Family. A strong advocate of women empowerment, girl child education and aborgation of child marriage in Rajasthan, he was a humanitarian of the highest order. Urmul Group of Organisations continue to march on the path of generosity, kindness and integrity set by him.
As everyone around him aches in his passing owing to COVID-19, his hard earned achievements shall forever be cherished. Some of them being:
  • Herculean efforts to curb Malaria in Western Rajasthan.
  • During the famine,works of public participation, cooperation, public consciousness etc were carried out by him.
  • Continuous efforts and hardwork for the protection of child rights and awareness on primary education for disadvantaged girls.
  • Appointment of health workers and creating consciousness about health and hygiene in the villages.
  • Continuous efforts and contribution towards common awareness and improvement of rural health, curbing of malnutrition, anemia and TB etc.
  • Cost-effective schools set up in 450 villages through Shiksha Karmi Projects with assistance from Village Education Committees.
  • Creating consciousness about the importance of education in every village through Lok Jumbish Project.
  • Declaration of 155 gram panchayats as female foeticide free gram panchayats.
  • Worked closely with over 500 women who migrated from Pakistan, to build resilience and initiating the Income Generation Programme to make them self-reliant.
  • Efforts to showcase the vulnerability of women and adolescent girls in both national and international levels.
  • Contribution to promote indigenous livelihood of the desert including animal husbandry, agriculture, crafts pastoralism and families engaged in leather work as well as to promote employment of youth, raise awareness of camel milk etc.
  • Initiation of Urmul School
  • Conducting regular tasks to make all the government schemes accessible to the people.
  • Start RKCL’s center so that benefits are directly provided to the disadvantaged people of the village.
  • Improvement of the infrastructure Urmul Seemant Samiti Campus in a short time.
  • Raising funds through the medium of several partners and stakeholders like Childline, Plan India, CAF, Oracle, UNICEF, Save the Childre , Tata Trust, Border Area Development Programme, Usha Silai Company, NABARD, Government of India to promote the disadvantaged groups in the rural areas.

Arvind Ojha ji and the entire country was combating the COVID 19. A couple of days prior to his admission in PBM Hospital, Bikaner, he was managing and regulating tasks as a leader with the field and office staff of Urmul Seemant Samiti, GNB Rajasthan, National University of Rajasthan, Plan India, Save The Children, UNICEF etc. on a continuous basis through virtual modes like Zoom, Google. He helped thousands of people combat the pandemic’s heat however we lost him in this struggle.