Team
Ground Warriors
Prakhar Bhartiya
‘Service before Self’, says the signature of this youngster. He highly believes in the power of youth. Before jumping full-time in Youth Alliance, he was the part of Teach For India movement as the pioneer batch fellow. He taught as a full-time class teacher in under resourced school in Kondhwa,Pune and Kurla, Mumbai. He has also worked as a consultant with NIIT Foundation, working towards youth empowerment. He has been a part of Jagriti Yatra- an eighteen journey on train with a vision to enlighten the entrepreneurial spirit among youth and as an Indian delegate to South Asian Youth Conference. Prakhar likes travelling, cooking, talking to people and practicing random acts of kindness. His aim in life is to shift the course of Indian politics from caste based politics to developmental politics. He can be reached through his BLOG.
Vibhuti Aggarwal
Vibhuti is currently pursuing her second year in Eco Hons. from LSR, Delhi University. Passionate about working at grass route level to bring about a difference in the society she wants to work with under served people in the field of education. She likes to explore all possible things in life and believes that each one has the potential to bring the change the change they would want to see.
Akanksha Sharma
I am currently a final yr student pursuing B.Com from Kamala Nehru College,Delhi University. I believe that every citizen of our country is responsible for all the ill that prevails in our society today. Everyone of us has the capability of leading a change,making our society a better place to live in.Leading a change does not necessarily means doing big things,even our small gestures of switching off the lights or closing the taps when not it in use can make a big difference to our society. To bring a change all we need, is to be aware of how our acts are going to effect the society and what can we do to transform lives of all those underprivileged people around me.
I stronly believe that, ”The best way to find yourself,is to lose yourself in the service of others”-Mahatma Gandhi
Shivang Grover
Shivang is currently pursuing his final year for graduation in B.Com. Honours from D.U. In his own words, “I believe that a smile on a person’s face is priceless so if you can buy that smile by committing a part of your time, whats the bad deal in that? To buy that smile I joined YA. YA gave me a platform and connected me to the real world. Trust me there is a lot of difference between the world you see and the real world.” He is at the stage of exploring new avenues for him and keeps trying different thing. He likes photography and has a very creative mind.
Udit Malik
Udit is pursuing final year of graduation in B.A(prog) from D.U. In his own words,”I believe if u want to change then Be the change , you wanna see in the world. The reason why I joined Youth Alliance is because it gave me the platform to work on the grass route level to face the real world, to be the part of the real picture because the part of society from which we belong it sometimes becomes difficult for us to walk on the right path(how to help)”
He loves exploring new places ,meeting new people, reading books. He believes that every individual in this world has that spark, has that energy to bring the change, to bring that sweet smile on every face.
Bhagyashree Barua
Bhagyashree is currently pursuing her final year of graduation in BA Honours(Political Science) from LSR, Delhi University. She also writes articles for Youth Ki Awaaz, an online portal famous for youth activism. She joined Youth Alliance because of her passion to contribute for underserved society. She likes writing poems, articles, short stories.
Air Force
Dr. Sanjiv Mishra
Dr. Sanjiv Mishra is a journalist by profession and an activist by passion. He has 17 years experience in journalism with specialization in Youth, Rural, Health and Political Journalism. He is an avid writer, who writes stories for mankind and poems for the change. His stories have been published in major newspapers and literary magazines across the country. He says, “In my opinion youth is the power house of our country. Today’s need for youth is the right path and approach.”
Divya Gupta
Divya Gupta, graduated in Marketing from Lady Shri Ram College of Woman, currently pursuing 2 years fellowship with Teach for India, a nationwide movement to bring Educational Equity in India, teaching in a low income private school in Jahangir Puri Slums. Youth, the most valuable asset of any country… the challenge before India is to channelize the immense potential of its youth and igniting their inner power to be the change. She has also worked with Synovate a Market Research firm for an year. In long run she aims to work in rural India and empower the people there.
Kishan Gopal
Kishan belongs to a small town in Rajasthan, a mechanical engineer by qualification. He worked with Asia’s largest IT consulting company and served world’s largest healthcare services provider for about three years. Finding his passion in while volunteering in Razabazar slums Kolkata, he joined pioneer batch of Teach For India, where as a full time teacher he taught in Kondhva Khurd, Pune and for a year in slums of Dharavi in Mumbai while working with Bombay Municipal Corporation. He strongly believes that there is no dearth of resources, one needs to channelize those in the right direction and he tries to be the bridge. He is passionate about social entrepreneurship, was invited to attend Global Social Business Summit 2011, Vienna. His ideas of social business are appreciated by Dr. Mohd. Yunus. He loves playing flute and follows Vipassana meditation.
Shefali Bajpae
Shefali is a graduate from IIT, Kanpur. Currently she is working with Teach For India as fellow in Dharavi Transit Camp. She worked as a consultant with Deloitte for an year after her graduation and eventually moved on to work full time in development sector. Her passion is education and women empowerment. In long run she finds herself both as an academician nurturing future leaders and also a social activist working on ground to bring in the positive change. Shefali is very articulate about her views and comes across as a charismatic personality.
Vaibhav Mathur
Vaibhav Mathur is a consultant with Evolution Partners, a boutique strategy consulting firm focusing on business implementation, building expertise in how to set up and scale up businesses, identifying high need areas, creating strong levers for growth, setting processes, and creating partnerships. A Teach For India (2009) Fellow, Vaibhav served students in a low income school in Mumbai. Prior to TFI, Vaibhav was part of the Global Management Trainee program at Li & Fung, the world’s largest supply chain management and trading company. A delegate at the World Youth Congress 2010, Vaibhav served as the vice chairperson of the South Asian Youth Conference 2011, which brought hundreds of south Asian youth together on development issues. Vaibhav is an Electronics and Communications Engineer by qualification.
Advisors/Mentors
Shaheen Mistry
Shaheen is the CEO of Teach For India movement. She is also the founder of the Akanksha Foundation, a non-profit organization with a mission to impact the lives of less privileged children, enabling them to maximise their potential and change their lives. Akanksha works primarily in the field of education, addressing non formal education through the Akanksha centre model and also formal education by initiating school reforms. Over the past 19 years, the organization has expanded from 15 children in one centre to over 3,500 children across Mumbai and Pune. Mistri is an Ashoka Fellow (2001), a Global Leader for Tomorrow at the World Economic Forum (2002), an Asia Society 21 Leader (2006) and serves on the boards of Ummeed, The Thermax Social Initiatives Foundation and is an advisor to the Latika Roy Foundation. Mistri has been working on the idea of Teach For India from 2007, and serves as its founding CEO and one of its founding Board Members.
Dev Tayde
Dev currently manages the Indicorps fellowship. He joined the Indicorps team in January 2006 and has ambidextrously juggled Project Development and Fellowship Support roles. Dev brings a decade of experience spread over low cost housing and sanitation, community development, governance, education, youth development and capacity building. His volunteer stints with numerous organizations across India have enabled him to channelize his passion for service. Dev assisted co-found Down To Earth and Jagruti, non-profits engaged with children and youth from humble backgrounds and rural development respectively. Dev loves his time with earthworms as they collectively dig deep to make the world greener, and with young adults in workshops and on sports fields exchanging notes about making things better. During his time at the Akanksha Foundation, he was voted “Most Hardworking Team Member” for two successive years. The award was scrapped in the third year!!
Swapnil Kant Dixit
Swapnil Kant Dixit is the Executive Director for Jagriti Yatra. After his graduation from IIT Kharagpur, he worked as a consultant in New Delhi for a year before joining the Jagriti Yatra Team. His formative years saw a good mix of cities like Delhi and Lucknow, towns like Khudaganj in UP, and villages like Ghorakhal in Uttaranchal and Bahadurpur, deep within rural Uttar Pradesh. His experiences include advertising, rural education, architecture, theatre, analytics and music.
Vivek Sharma
Vivek currently works with Gandhi fellowship. Before joining Gandhi Fellowship, he was a Programme Director with Pratham, a leading NGO, working on universalising elementary education and creating school improvement programmes for and with the government. While working on Pratham’s footprint in the northern states. he set up learning enhancement programmes in government schools. Was trained to be a journalist and spent over a decade working for a cross-section of Indian media, including the last assignment as Group Editorial Coordinator, India Today. Was part of some hugely successful tech start-ups in the space of www, IT & Telecom. In his third and final career Vivek decided to deal with a fundamental issue like Shiksha (Education). He travels across the country looking for Gandhi Fellows.
Anshu Gupta
A postgraduate in economics with a double PG Dip. in Journalism, Advertising and PR from IIMC, in 1998 Anshu left a corporate career to work full time on GOONJ, his dream for many years. In his journalistic stint Anshu closely analyzed the suffering due to lack of proper clothing especially in winters. In 2004 Anshu was made an Ashoka Fellow in recognition of his innovative work and entrepreneurial ability. He has led GOONJ’s growth as an idea and as a nationwide movement, over the last ten years, making clothing a matter of concern and linking it with the development process.