Our Bureau
New Delhi
In a defining moment for purpose-led leadership and global public health impact, Sandeepp Saxena has been conferred the prestigious Impactful CSR Leader of India 2025 award at the ET Now Champions of CSR Conclave, an ET Edge initiative of The Times Group, held in New Delhi.
The recognition celebrates Mr. Saxena’s sustained and transformational contribution to the World Without Childhood Blindness mission—one of the world’s most enduring, scalable, and human-centric public health movements. As Executive Director for Eye Foundation of America (EFA) and its UK initiatives, he has been instrumental in strengthening and scaling the Foundation’s largest India implementation partnership with Goutami Eye Institute, delivering life-changing eye care to children across underserved communities.
Beyond Philanthropy: Impact in Action
The ET Now Champions of CSR Conclave 2025, themed “Beyond Philanthropy: Impact in Action,” convened India’s foremost CSR, policy, and social impact leaders to spotlight initiatives that go beyond cheque-writing to build lasting systems. Mr. Saxena’s journey exemplifies this shift—where CSR is designed as a high-impact delivery engine aligned with national priorities and global development goals.
Under his leadership, CSR investments have translated into structured neonatal eye care, school vision screening programmes, technology-enabled diagnostics, clinical capacity building, and last-mile outreach—ensuring early detection and timely treatment for children who would otherwise face a lifetime of avoidable blindness. The outcomes are profound: stronger education outcomes, reduced lifelong disability, empowered families, and generational social mobility.
Inspired by a Legacy That Began in 1977
At the heart of Mr. Saxena’s work lies the enduring inspiration of Dr. V. K. Raju, Founder President of the Eye Foundation of America. Dr. Raju’s journey began on January 31, 1977, with a modest eye camp in India—an act of service that ignited a global humanitarian movement spanning nearly five decades.
Since that defining day, Dr. Raju has dedicated his life to serving children across India, Africa, the United States, and the United Kingdom, building one of the world’s most respected ecosystems for preventing childhood blindness. His philosophy—that sight is not charity but justice—continues to guide the movement.
Mr. Saxena often credits Dr. Raju’s moral clarity, discipline, and belief in institution-building as the compass for his own leadership. “Dr. Raju taught us that service must outlive the individual,” he says. “When a child can see, education follows, confidence grows, families rise, and societies progress.”
Carrying this legacy forward, Mr. Saxena has translated Dr. Raju’s founding ethos into scalable, system-driven impact—aligning global philanthropy, CSR leadership, service organisations, and frontline institutions to ensure that preventable childhood blindness becomes a relic of the past.
Leadership Rooted in Service: Rotary and Lions
A lifelong believer in service above self, Mr. Saxena is a senior and committed member of Rotary International. He currently serves as Chair for the Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) Program for Rotary International District 3011, leading one of the most critical interventions in pediatric eye health.
ROP is a leading but preventable cause of childhood blindness among premature infants. Under Mr. Saxena’s leadership, Rotary’s grassroots strength has been aligned with global medical expertise to ensure early screening, timely laser treatment, neonatal unit integration, and awareness among families—particularly in high-risk, low-resource settings.
Mr. Saxena is also a Paul Harris Fellow, Rotary’s highest recognition for individuals who transform ideals into sustained action.
Complementing his Rotary journey, he is a Melvin Jones Fellow of Lions Clubs International, the Foundation’s highest humanitarian honour. Through Lions, he has strengthened collaborative eye care initiatives, leveraging Lions’ global reach and community trust to amplify outcomes in vision preservation and blindness prevention.
Scaling the World Without Childhood Blindness Mission
Through EFA’s partnership with Goutami Eye Institute—one of India’s most respected pediatric and ROP-focused eye hospitals—thousands of premature babies have been screened and treated, and millions of schoolchildren reached through structured eye screening programmes. These interventions are evidence-based, cost-effective, and replicable, making them ideal for CSR, government, and multilateral adoption.
Mr. Saxena’s leadership has focused on systems over silos:
- sustainable hospital capacity and infrastructure,
- technology-driven screening and diagnostics,
- training doctors, nurses, and technicians,
- aligning CSR funding with public health frameworks, and
- ensuring dignity, equity, and access for the most vulnerable children.
Global Outlook, Local Impact
Operating seamlessly across global and local contexts, Mr. Saxena works with EFA’s international leadership, UK stakeholders, Indian corporates, and grassroots institutions—positioning childhood blindness as a development imperative linked directly to education, productivity, and generational equity.
His work provides corporates with a credible, transparent, and high-impact pathway to deploy CSR funds while delivering measurable outcomes aligned with global health and education priorities.
A Humble Dedication
Accepting the award, Mr. Saxena dedicated the honour to the ecosystem that has sustained the mission for nearly five decades.
“This recognition belongs to every doctor saving a child’s sight, every Rotary and Lions volunteer serving in the field, every corporate that chose impact over optics, and every family that trusted us with their child’s future,” he said. “When children can see, nations can rise.”
A Beacon of Purposeful Leadership
The Impactful CSR Leader of India 2025 award affirms Sandeepp Saxena’s role as a bridge-builder—between philanthropy and policy, compassion and competence, vision and execution. From Dr. V. K. Raju’s pioneering service in 1977 to today’s global CSR stewardship, this intergenerational continuum of leadership stands as proof that true impact is institutional, scalable, and generational.