Sudha Varghese

In addition to the standard curriculum, Prerna also teaches arts and dance, and hired a karate teacher. Varghese felt that karate would give the girls "more self-confidence, and also self-protection". The girls of Prerna Chhatravas became so proficient that they won five gold, five silver and 14 bronze medals at a competition in Gujarat in 2011, earning a trip to the Asian Junior Karate Championships in Japan, where they won seven trophies.

In 2006, Varghese was the recipient of the Padma Shri, a civilian honour awarded by the Government of India.

In 2005 she moved to Patna, where she established a residential school named Prerna, a Hindi word meaning inspiration. It was in a building described as "half public latrine and half water-buffalo shed" in Lal Kothi, on the outskirts of Danapur. Restoration of the facility was made possible with government funding and volunteer donations and help. It opened in 2006.

From that time, she built schools and a home, and in 1989 obtained a law degree from a school in Bangalore to "fight cases for women who have faced abuse", particularly cases of rape, sexual harassment, and violence against women. She was also in a demonstration supporting the victim of the 2012 Delhi gang rape case.

Varghese was born to a prosperous family in the Kottayam district of Kerala on 5 September 1944. In 1965, she moved to Bihar to work for the poor with the Sisters of Notre Dame at the Notre Dame Academy. She trained there for a few years, during which she learned English and Hindi. She resigned from her job as a teacher in the convent, and in 1986 moved into a complex of mud and brick houses (tola) used by the lowest castes in India, to educate the Musahar.