Soulful स्कूल | Session 9 | Dr. Shayama Chona - Tamana Foundation, Delhi

Dr.(Mrs.) Shayama Chona

“Awarded Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan by the President of India, former Principal, Delhi Public School, RK Puram

Dr.Shayama Chona, Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan Awardee, is former Principal of Delhi Public School RK Puram, New Delhi - a world class institution. Her efforts to break the barriers of schools to include the poor and the handicapped are unprecedented. She has launched major initiatives to strengthen school teaching of STEM subjects: Science, Technology ,Engineering and Mathematics which now also includes Arts and has moved from STEM to STEAM. She is a strong advocate of critical thinking and believes that it should be promoted since childhood by parents and teachers alike.

Dr. Chona has been serving as a member of over 99 Advisory Boards, Committees , Educational Institutions and is a member of UNESCO. She has been associated with the Special Olympics, Concerned Action Now’ and the Society for Human Development .She has been named in the Limca Book of Records 2007 as the woman who has received the highest number of awards. She firmly believes and lives by the principle that “We also live in a wider world, a world in which we bear enormous responsibility”.

Dr. Chona has given concrete shape and direction to her transcendent principles, by setting up 3 centres for the mentally challenged: ‘Tamana Special Centre’, Tamana‘Nai Disha: Skill Development Centre’ and the Tamana ‘Autism Centre’. As their Founder-member, she has been working for the upliftment of the multiple-handicapped children since 1970, and celebrates humanity with the dictum, “Numberless are the world’s wonders, but none more wonderful than man”. Not only has her contribution been recognized and felicitated time and again, her investment in the field of education and social welfare has given concrete shape directly to the nation’s education policies and welfare programmes.

She is the proud recipient of over 65 awards, the most prestigious being the Padma Shri in 1998, Padma Bhushan in 2008,two National Awards in 1997 and 1994 and two State Awards in 1993 for her investment in the field of education and social welfare. For over 5 decades, Dr. Chona has served the community and the society at large, with distinction and timeless dedication. Her mission to educate and empower both the well-to-do and the needy, the abled alongwith the disabled, and the ‘haves’ with the ‘have-nots’, has never known any boundaries, and has led to the full realization of the human potential. Overall, Dr. Chona’s work may be best described as a confluence of deep and abiding compassion for everyone and humility in the exercise of vast responsibility. She indeed stands among the very best.