Thirteen-year-old Santhosh is emphatic that Parikrma's is the first school he has attended and not got bored out of his mind. One of the reasons why 12-year-old Kumar likes to come to this school is because the teachers teach in English and this will help him read English newspapers.

Santhosh and Kumar are but two examples of children who could have been on the street, receiving no education at all. With the intervention of the Parikrma Humanity Foundation, Bangalore, they are being given a second chance at life…and living.

When I meet Shukla Bose, the Bangalore-based founder-CEO, Parikrma, on my recent visit to the Garden City, her opening words almost stun me into silence. "I was mentally writing my obituary. I had power, exposure, experience, respect and key roles at the FICCI and CII. Yet, I felt that eventually I would be doing the same thing, over and over again here. I got restless, as I wanted to make a difference to society, leave a lasting legacy," says Bose, who was reportedly the highest paid woman executive in India in her last corporate assignment as managing director, Resort Condominiums India.

After two decades in the upper echelons of the corporate world, Bose took the plunge and made an extraordinary career switch so that she could serve the poor slum children in Bangalore."I accepted the offer of Christel de Haan, the promoter of RCI to start Christel House, a free school for orphaned and abandoned children in the city. There were too many hurdles though and I soon realised that this was not what I had set out to achieve. Rather than continue half-heartedly, I called it a day and quit."

Initially disheartened by this setback, Bose's institution building skills that had distinguished her corporate career, soon propelled her forward in her own mission to empower slum children through the provision of equal opportunity education in English. With the other founding members, she formed the Parikrma Humanity Foundation. "I put in all my life's savings to start Parikrma and my husband and daughter supported me completely," says Bose. "In the summer of 2003, we began with 325 children; now we have 740 children from 26 slums studying with us."

Bose lost no time in registering the new non-profit company and since then the foundation has persuaded several companies like Levi Strauss, TNT, Adobe Systems and Yahoo to sponsor its four centres of learning, located in the midst of urban Bangalore. "The schools have to be centrally located so that the children can walk there safely alone," says Bose.