Changing The World, One Impact Project At A Time 

Simranpreet Singh Oberoi, a Young India Fellowship (YIF) alumnus, has been able to impact as many as 10,000 children’s lives in India through his work. As a social entrepreneur, Simpranpreet is the co-founder of Sanjhi Sikhiya– a grassroots level, non-profit, community-based organisation which aims to bring quality education to Government Schools in Punjab. Founded in August 2017, this project started with a vision to create spaces for people to come together and support each other in the process of transforming Punjab and its education system. The Punjab Youth Leaders Program, a two-year fellowship for young people who have shown extraordinary leadership, was also founded by Sanjhi Sikhiya. 

Ashoka has played a pivotal role in Simranpreet’s journey to fulfil his social entrepreneurial endeavours– something he had hoped to do since his first run-in with people working tirelessly towards change at The Jagriti Yatra, a non-profit initiative focusing on tier 2 and 3 cities, which started with the aim of inspiring young entrepreneurs. Simranpreet says, “For anything you do, the most important element is people and learning how to work with those who have different worldviews and life experiences. This is something I learnt at Ashoka. It was all about listening to different perspectives. It’s continuous learning – how do I work effectively or speak in a language that is understood by different people?” 

Today, his work has been applauded by the World Economic Forum backed Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. 

Many alumni of the Young India Fellowship have gone on to work within social impact, often together– taking the knowledge and skills they picked up at Ashoka on the ground level and fostering real, tangible change in their communities. Like Simran, YIF fellows Jonathan Mendoca and Saumya Aggarwal have also been working closely with issues related to education for children.

They both met first in 2017 as peers for the YIF programme. Together, they started the Barefoot Edu Foundation (now known as The Unifly Collective) as an Experiential Learning Module (ELM) project. For both Jonathan and Saumya, the YIF provided the platform to transition to a new field – education. Their first scalable project – capacity building of 14,000 Anganwadi teachers was made possible through the support of the Chief Minister’s Good Governance Associates Programme  hosted at Ashoka. 

“The YIF exposed us to a lot of courses. These seemed unrelated at the time, but have helped us think about complex problems through different lenses,” the duo said. The Ashoka ecosystem played a crucial role in helping them scale this idea. “Both the Mother Teresa Fellowship and the InfoEdge Centre for Entrepreneurship incubated us. That gave us the confidence that someone has our back and believes in what we want to achieve,” said Jonathan. “Doing the YIF is a privilege,” he added.  Barefoot Edu Foundation currently works with over 1.3 lakh schools. 

To add to the list of countless YIF alumni who have found their passion and footing in social impact, another duo of YIFs, Monika Shukla and Varun Kashyap, also co-founded a social enterprise: Let’s Endorse. 

Monika came to the YIF after completing her bachelor’s degree in engineering, to cultivate a multidisciplinary perspective. And this is where she met Varun. The Fellowship gave them the opportunity to meet with organisations such as Yum Foods and the Akshay Patra Foundation, helping them realise the potential of pooling together solutions to bring greater efficiency and transparency to the development sector. And this led to the idea of  creating the first “market network” which would connect innovators, solution providers, technology, grassroots organisations and NGOs with CSR budgets. Though the ambitious project was described by investors as “trying to boil the ocean”, they were both confident. Today, Let’s Endorse has a team of 38 people working across 115 districts in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Telangana. Monika said that the aim is to create a million micro-entrepreneurs by 2025, and 10 million by 2030.

The Young India Fellowship provides a fertile ground for passion and ideas for social impact are nurtured. As many as XX Young India fellows have gone to impact the world in their own ways, from working on ground to starting their own enterprises. As we face a world riddled with gaps to fill through innovative ideas and tireless efforts, the network of YIFs are constantly finding new ways to build community, impact change, and empower those whose lives they touch along the way.