About
To revive and preserve the traditional arts, crafts and culture of Indian tribes; to empower artisans through skill development and enterprise leadership; to promote heritage education among youth.
Happy Hands Foundation is a Delhi-based not-for-profit organisation founded in July 2009 by social entrepreneur Medhavi Gandhi. Its mission is to revive and preserve traditional arts, crafts and culture of Indian tribes and communities, empower artisans through skill and enterprise development, and promote heritage education among youth. Happy Hands works across 11-12 Indian states with artisans from over 35 craft clusters, engaging folk and tribal art forms including Warli, Madhubani, Kaavad, Patua scrolls, Cheriyal mask-making, puppetry and kite-making. Key initiatives include Green Room (artisan-designer collaboration workshops with design institutes), Project Dor (women's empowerment programme), travelling museum exhibits and heritage education workshops with schools and colleges. Artisans supported by Happy Hands have performed at American Center Delhi and worked with brands including HCL, Coca-Cola and Limca Records.
Medhavi Gandhi founded Happy Hands immediately after graduating, inspired by seeing Western volunteers working with Indian artisans in remote villages and asking why Indians were not doing this themselves. Her formative inspiration was Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, the pioneering figure behind India's National School of Drama, Crafts Council and Performing Arts Museums -- a vision of cultural recognition that Gandhi has continued in her own work. Happy Hands was a finalist at the British Council's Young Design Entrepreneur Awards 2011. Its Green Room initiative, which brings artisans together with design institutes and students for collaborative workshops culminating in public exhibitions, has become a model for artisan-designer dialogue. The Foundation's focus on endangered art forms -- Cheriyal mask-making, Kaavad storytelling, Patua scroll art -- reflects an urgent documentation and revival mandate.
Founding & Leadership
Medhavi Gandhi is a social entrepreneur and founder of Happy Hands Foundation. She was a finalist at the British Council's Young Design Entrepreneur Awards 2011. She cites Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay as her formative inspiration.
Initiatives & Portfolio
Artisan-designer collaboration workshops pairing artisans with design-institute students, designers and brands, with panel discussions and a concluding public exhibition.
Described as India's first design residency for craftspeople, giving artisans structured time and mentorship to develop new work.
Entrepreneurship and enterprise-leadership programmes for women artisans to build sustainable creative livelihoods.
An arts-education programme delivered in partnership with Teach For India.
Travelling-museum and living-museum experiences, including an exhibit on Hampi and the Vijayanagara empire.
A programme under Happy Hands' craft-revival work supporting artisans and traditional forms through contemporary platforms.
Happy Hands fills a specific gap in India's craft ecosystem: the connection between rural artisans and urban audiences, design institutions and brands, in a way that generates sustainable income without compromising the authenticity of the practice. Its multi-state reach (11-12 states, 35+ clusters) and its engagement with endangered narrative art forms (Kaavad, Patua scrolls, Cheriyal) make it more than a craft NGO -- it is an active preservation organisation for living storytelling traditions.
[Atlas Perspective] Happy Hands Foundation is a grassroots craft and folk-art organisation with genuine depth across multiple endangered traditions. Founded in 2009 by Medhavi Gandhi and a co-founder while both were in their early twenties, it set out to make India's artisans relevant to contemporary life, working with craftspeople across eleven to twelve states to build sustainable livelihoods rather than one-off charity. Against a backdrop in which more than two hundred Indian crafts are considered endangered, that mission is real and specific.
Its most distinctive contribution has been method rather than scale. Through its Green Room workshops it paired artisans with design institutes, students and brands; it developed what it described as India's first design residency for craftspeople; it ran entrepreneurship programmes for women artisans and an arts-education programme with Teach For India; and it built travelling-museum experiences, including one on Hampi and the Vijayanagara empire. These are thoughtful models for connecting rural craft to urban design economies.
The honest counterweight is scale and continuity. Happy Hands has always been a very small team, and its founder has since moved on to lead The Heritage Lab, a museum-engagement platform, so the foundation's recent public activity is limited and lightly documented [Unverified]. For the Atlas, its value lies in the pioneering artisan-development models it demonstrated and in its founder's articulate case for why craft preservation matters, models that larger, better-funded organisations are well-positioned to carry forward.