In this week’s edition of Community Wise, The Pioneer highlights the initiatives undertaken by the SBI Foundation, which is working towards benefiting the less privileged.
Amartya Smaran
More than 800 million people live in rural India. Most of the regions lack basic facilities and are in dire need of intervention for development. SBI Foundation’s Youth for India fellowship programme provides a unique opportunity for urban youth between the ages of 21 and 32 years to reach out to the rural population.
SBI Foundation is the CSR (corporate social responsibility) arm of the State Bank of India. It undertakes projects that are meant for the benefit and upliftment of people who are less privileged. Generally focusing on the marginalised sections of society. The foundation’s initiative goes hand-in-hand with India’s G20 goals.
Each year, about 80–100 people (men and women) are selected and attached to a partner NGO. They are further assigned to a territory that is away from their native place. The NGOs have a local base and act as a guiding force. The ones who are selected are put under training for about a month and get to study the local situation. They identify a project to work on, based on which aspects of a particular area need intervention. It’s a 13-month fellowship programme. Barring one month of initial training, the rest of the 12 months they work under the mentorship and guidance of the NGOs.
In a conversation with The Pioneer, Sanjay Prakash, Managing Director and CEO, of SBI Foundation, shared, “What excites us the most is the basic idea behind the initiative. We look at how it is going to benefit the people and how honest their commitment is. Weight is given to whether the participants are really well prepared and to the economics they worked on. Based on these criteria, we decide how much we can provide to kick-start the project.”
The SBI Foundation has celebrated a decade of this fellowship programme. About 125 out of the 520 alumni base assembled at the Youth for India Conclave that was conducted in Delhi on April 8th and 9th.
As per a statement released by the SBI foundation, grants amounting to approximately INR 2.4 million were given out to the winners during the ‘SBI YFI Sahyog – The Pitch Fest’ held at the Conclave 2023.
The projects greenlit by the SBI Foundation have managed to directly impact more than one lakh lives across 20 states. Speaking of the elite work that one of the former fellows of the flagship programme has done, Sanjay Prakash enthused, “Shrithi Pandey is the founder of Strawcture. The alumnus was featured in Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2021. Her company utilises the straw for sustainability and environmental impact. This in fact generates employment for local women and supports the Make in India concept.”
“We have not yet planned the strategy for the coming year,” said Sanjay Prakash, talking about the vision he set out for the foundation. “However, we have the vision to reach every corner of the country. In fact, we’ve already reached almost every state except one or two union territories.”
The Managing Director’s aim at the moment is to focus on the rural areas that receive little to no attention from the CSR funders or the NGOs. “We’ve particularly identified such areas in the North Eastern States. We want to focus on the seven sisters of India. Some central Indian states like Chhattisgarh and Odisha have a lot of scope for improvement. We can do a lot for these areas. Otherwise, we don’t have any territorial barriers. We operate in all parts of the country.”
The projects range from technology to women’s empowerment to self-governance to traditional craft and alternate energy. We wondered if the foundation has any plans to venture into the core of Indian classical dance forms and folklore to promote artisans.
“So far, we’ve not done any such project directly,” informed Sanjay Prakash. He concluded by saying, “We have a provision under arts and culture that aims at preserving the cultural heritage. If any good project comes under this initiative, we’ll be happy to take it up. For instance, the R.K. Laxman Foundation set up a museum in Pune. The children from the government schools will be taken on a tour and guided through the brilliance of R.K.
Laxman’s cartoons. It will be an educational journey for them. We take up such kinds of projects on a limited scale depending upon the merits of the project. We are very much committed to the development of arts and culture. We’ll definitely take up projects that fall under our ambit. We shall certainly consider and assess.”
