Ms. Vandana Gopikumar
Vandana Gopikumar, a Master’s student of Social Work, came across a mentally ill homeless woman in distress on the road in front of her college. With the help of a close friend, Vaishnavi Jayakumar, she tried to find shelter for the woman. Mental health institutions and NGOs were reluctant to admit the woman in desperate need of medical and psychiatric attention. Several more such encounters over the next few months left the 23-year-old women disillusioned, leading them to develop The Banyan as an NGO serving Chennai’s homeless women with mental illnesses. The organization rented a three-bedroom building to run a care and rehabilitation centre, which they called Adaikalam (Tamil for ‘home’). Since 1993, The Banyan has reached out to more than 1500 women and reunited around 850 women with their families all throughout India. The vision of The Banyan is to ensure that no mentally ill homeless person is left uncared and unattended for in the streets. Ms. Vandana is the co-founder and managing trustee of The Banyan. She is co-founder of The Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health (BALM). Ms. Vandana was awarded Stree Shakthi Puraskar in 2003 by Government of India
