Keepu Tsering Lepcha

Keepu Tsering Lepcha is an Indian social worker, educationist, former civil servant and the founder of the Human Development Foundation of Sikkim (HDFS), a non governmental organization serving the socio-economically challenged people of Sikkim. A former secretary of the Government of Sikkim, she has served as the project director in the Rural Development Agency of the government. She is a member of the PeaceWomen Across the Globe organization which was shortlisted for the Nobel Peace Prize of 2005, and a recipient of the 2012 Real Heroes Award of the Reliance Foundation and the 2013 Senior Citizen Award of the CNN-IBN. The Government of India awarded her the fourth highest civilian honour of the Padma Shri, in 2009, for her contributions to society.

Biography Keepu Tsering was born in 1942 in a Lepcha family to a government official in a rural area of the Northeast Indian state of Sikkim and did her primary and secondary education in Gangtok before completing her college studies at Kolkata from where she secured a master's degree. She started her career in 1967 as the principal of the Enchey Senior Secondary School, Gangtok but stayed there only for a short period to move to the Government High School, Gangtok where the majority of students were the children of Tibetan refugees. She has been holding the chair of the organization since its inception and the organization which won the National Award for Children's Welfare in 2003, runs a school for the under-privileged children, numbering 400. Two years later, she received the Best Social Service Award of the Government of Sikkim, the investiture ceremony taking place on 16 May 2007. In 2013, CNN-IBN awarded her the Senior Citizen Award for her services to the Lepcha community.