SBI Youth for India is an Indian rural fellowship programme initiated, funded and managed by the State Bank of India in partnership with reputed NGOs. The selected fellows work with experienced NGOs on challenging grass root development projects. The fellowship is an initiative to sensitize and provide avenues for the more privileged sections to become aware of ground realities and contribute through their personal efforts towards building strong cohesive communities; a pre-requisite for a stable socio-political environment, which in turn would lead to economic regeneration. The focus of the fellowship has been in generating interest of the educated youth towards the social sector and in incubating the spirit of social entrepreneurship.
History
The SBI Youth for India Fellowship was launched on 1 March 2011, in partnership with three reputed NGOs: M.S.Swaminathan Research Foundation, BAIF Development Research Foundation and Seva Mandir. All the three NGOs have more than two decades of experience in the development sector. The second batch was launched in September 2014 comprising 51 fellows. Currently the seventh batch is running with 52 fellows across 10 NGO's in India. The fellowship and its work has been appreciated by eminent personalities like Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Mr. Ratan Tata, D.S. Subbarao, Mrs. Rajashree Birla, Mr. O. P. Bhatt, and Professor M.S. Swaminathan amongst others.
Partner NGOs
The SBI Youth for India fellowship works with 10 eminent NGOs as partners namely
The Fellows range between 21–32 years of age and they come from all parts of India. Adequate representation of all geographical regions of the country and of gender is achieved through a stringent selection criterion that ensures the quality of the fellows with only approximately 1 out of every 100 applicants being selected. The SBI Youth for India fellows are all graduates or postgraduates including alumni of eminent institutes such as the Indian Institute of Technology, Indian Institute of Management, BITS - Pilani, NIFT, CEPT University, foreign universities and others. Most of the professionals have an engineering or management background although there are many with diverse background in biotechnology, urban planning, law, mathematics, and agricultural science. The Fellows have worked in a range of sectors including information technology, education, infrastructure, non-profit, healthcare and others and at leading organisations such as Tata Group, Cap Gemini, IBM, Mindtree, among many others. The flagship batch of the fellowship had 27 fellows selected out of about 4000 applicants, who worked for a year on various projects in the areas of agricultural supply chain and linkages, education, public policy and awareness, rural tourism, tribal development and environment in eight states and union territories. Every SBI Youth For India Fellow has the responsibility of ensuring that his project makes a positive impact on the community. It begins by planning a project, defining the expected outcomes and laying the road map to achieve it, with guidance of the mentors from partner NGOs.
Alumni
Notable Work
Shuvajit Payne from the 2011 batch is currently Head of Education at Barefoot College
Satwik Mishra and Komal Ramdey implented Garima Abhiyan' in Simdega which was country's first-ever district-wide MHM Awareness drive under which all 450 Villages of the district were covered.
Shriti Pandey is the Founder of Strawcture ECO
Grusha Victor of 2018-19 batch for her work on marketing indigenous brews was covered on The Pune Mirror
Saloni Sacheti, SBI Youth for India Fellow, Batch 2017-18 worked on promoting a bamboo-based village enterprise and has Founded Baansuli
Sunayna Chattrapati currently works as Deputy Diredctor in Makal Jagruti
Pratibha Krishnaiah has founded Himalayan Blooms
Simran Grover is the Founder of Bask Research Foundation
Piyush Kuhikar is the Founder of BitHelp Foundation
Alumni Network
The fellowship has a strong network of more than 303 alumni.
YFI Annual Meet
YFI Annual Meet is a 2-day affair centered around celebrating the spirit of Fellowship.The program includes release of the Coffee Table Book of the previous batch, Round-Table meeting of Partner NGOs, showcasing the work of our alumni, a Youth Conclave with panel discussion followed by networking with more than 100 external guests who attend the youth conclave.
Other Fellowship in India
ICICI foundation of ICICI Bank had started 2 years fellowship program in year 2010, continued in 2011 and selections are underway for ICICI Fellows 2012. Reliance Foundation of RIL had also started the DARE fellowship in 2011. In 2012, Prime Minister Rural Development Fellowship has also been started with the help of Tiss by Ministry of Rural Development, India to promote the youth involvement in Country's major problems.
