Who We Are

Introduction

Welcome to the official homepage of the Community Empowerment Lab. We are a community-entrenched global health research and innovation organization based in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Vision

To spark a movement where science and compassion come together to build a thriving world - one mother, one newborn, one community at a time.

Mission

We partner with communities and health systems to weave science and compassion into scalable solutions that transform care for the most vulnerable newborns and mothers.

Values

T - Together, We All Win
We believe in collective progress where communities, partners, and collaborators grow stronger together.
H - Human First, Always
Empathy, dignity, and respect are at the core of every decision we make, for every person we serve.
R - Research That Matters
We turn evidence into action by combining global knowledge with local wisdom to create measurable change.
I - Innovation with Purpose
We design creative, context-aware solutions rooted in the realities of the people we work with.
V - Values in Action
We act with integrity, respect, and transparency in every partnership and project.
E - Excellence for Impact
We pursue excellence not for recognition, but because the people and communities we serve deserve nothing less.

Our Origins

The seed of the organisation was sown in 2003 when Dr. Vishwajeet Kumar returned from the US to the state of Uttar Pradesh in India with the highest burden of newborn deaths, to focus on designing solutions for improving newborn survival. Dr. Vishwajeet Kumar, a physician and epidemiologist by training, former faculty at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA and a villager at heart and Ms. Aarti Kumar, an engineer and bioinformaticist by training who returned from Singapore to contribute to nation-building co-founded CEL in 2011. CEL is a mission-focused organization and makes scientific contributions - in terms of evidence and innovations - towards improving the survival and thrival of mothers and babies. CEL is now an ICMR Collaborating Centre of Excellence and an ICMR Centre for Advanced Research in Maternal & Newborn Health. CEL is also recognised by the Government of India’s Department of Scientific & Industrial Research as a Scientific & Industrial Research Organization (SIRO)