Dr. Shailendra is an engineer by profession. But being concerned about child protection, he made his career in this direction and became a member of the Rajasthan Children’s Commission of the Rajasthan Government.

Dr. Shailendra Pandya is a member of the Rajasthan Children’s Commission of Government of Rajasthan. Under this, he works for the protection of rights of children upto the age of 18 years . Even before this appointment, he was striving for child rights only.

Dr. Shailendra belongs to Udaipur. He did his schooling from the Hindi medium GNPS School and Engineering from Rajasthan University in Udaipur.

Dr. Shailendra shares that after completing his Engineering in 2008, he could have easily got a white-collar job in any MNC. But seeing the problem of child labor, he got inspired to work for them and decided to make a career in this field.

For this, he started working with an NGO and studied MSW, PGDM and PhD in child protection. Moving ahead in this journey, he got an opportunity to work closely with big NGOs like UNICEF, Gayatri Sansthan, etc. To prevent child labor, he tried to reach out to officers responsible for policy making at the state and central level to get an hold of it. Soon, a module to strengthen the grass-root level structure of Rajasthan was published by the government, under the name ‘Buniyaad’, which was written by him. Gradually, seeing his work, the government appointed him a member of the commission.

When asked about his role models, Dr. Shailendra says that he considers Mahatma Gandhi as the ideal of his life because of the way he had lived every phase of his life.

Talking about his struggles, Dr. Shailendra says that the biggest challenge he faced in his career was resistance from the community. Further, when it comes to child protection, many people take it lightly and this matter is not given due attention which encourages crime against children.

Dr. Shailendra says that due to the COVID pandemic, all his traveling had stopped. That affected his work too but soon he turned this disaster into an opportunity. Together with his IT team, he started a YouTube channel to work on a virtual basis.

Expressing his views about leadership, Dr. Shailendra says that a leader is incomplete without a team. And when you get a good team, you should understand the emotions of your team members to become a good leader. He, as a leader, always makes sure about the safety and security of his team along with himself, that’s what makes him a good leader.

Dr. Shailendra says that he is fond of clouds so whenever he gets time, he likes to go to any hill station and try to stay close to the clouds. Besides this, in his spare time, he enjoys playing the guitar, traveling, trekking and spending time with friends.

Dr. Shailendra advises all the students that along with studies, fun is also necessary as these days would never come back. So he suggests them to live these moments of school and college life freely and to the fullest.

Dr. Shailendra urges everyone to help the children by calling helpline numbers whenever they find any child in trouble. He tells them to be aware of the child protection rights and whenever something wrong is seen happening with the children, help the department by informing about it.