What takes me to Yuva Prerna Yatra 2014

It’s truly said : Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.

I had amazing experiences in Jagriti Yatra. I met lots of role models of India who are in real heroes of our country like Anshu Gupta, Founder of Goonj, Bunker Roy, Barefoot college. They are really changing India at the ground level. I was really inspired by this journey. After coming back I have decided to organize such inspirational journey in Gujarat. Meanwhile I came to know about Yuva Prerna Yatra from Ritesh Garg who has participated in Jagriti Yatra few years back. He is founding member of Yuva Prerna Yatra. e  gave me brief idea about Yuva Prerna Yatra. I was really impressed by their organization ( I For Nation Foundation) work. I have never been Himalayan part of the country. I thought this yatra would give me opportunity to explore Himalayan beauty as well as social enterprises located in this region. So I have decided to apply as facilitator in Yuva Prerna Yatra.

I got selected as facilitator. Total fee of Yatra is INR17k and I was being offered half sponsorship. I was quite nervous about remaining amount. So I have decided to do crowd funding by asking friends and relatives. They supported me a lot by giving their contribution to complete my remaining fees. And I was able to manage my fees for yatra.

I am really excited to explore Himalayan part to inspire youth of our nation where I have never been until now.

About Yuva Prerna Yatra

The “Yuva Prerna Yatra” in Himalayas is an annual life-changing bus journey, which will flow with 100 highly motivated youths, selected through a rigorous application process to explore and inspire the “Agents of Change”.

The “Yuva Prerna Yatra” takes 100 highly motivated Youths to a bus journey in Himalayas with a purpose to awaken an entrepreneurial spirit within them. During the journey, participants get an opportunity to interact and learn from exceptional “Champions of Change”, the unsung heroes, who have not only dared to dream but also realized their dreams into sustainable enterprises by utilizing the local resources and talent, thereby creating local livelihood opportunities and reducing migration in the Himalayan region. This Yatra aims to inspire youth to understand the value of creating sustainable enterprises in localized global context and to spur them to create similar models in their own arenas.

The word YUVA signifies a passion to bring out the change, a dream to travel the unbeaten path and energy as fresh as a new-born. We believe anyone and everyone who have the zeal and enthusiasm, and courage to leave their comfort zone and to work towards their dream is YUVA. We at Yuva Prerna look forward for such YUVA to be a part of this inspirational journey and get PRERNA to live their dreams during and after the YATRA.

Why Yuva Prerna Yatra?

Migration has become a rising concern in the Himalayan belt, with rapid urbanization, people are migrating to cities in search of employment and better living standard; leaving the vast potential of unutilized local resources and talent.With relatively lesser population density and rich natural assets, the Himalayan regions have a lot to offer to the country given the youth and the local resources are channelized in the right direction.

By bringing the youth of the region in highlight, Yuva Prerna Yatra aims to create awareness and exposure with proper guidance and mentoring to enable them to create sustainable enterprises in the region to tackle the issue of rapid migration. Youth, as we know, is an ocean of energy and enthusiasm which if channelized properly has the potential to unlock a lot of issues at hand in the region.

The team @ Yuva Prerna Yatra believes that youth are the key to un-earth the immense potential of growth and development lying in Himalayan regions. Through this powerful journey, the team envisions to explore these immense resources by engaging in dialogue with the Champions,learning from their life journeys and experiences, and at the same time digging more inside on our own ideas of creative sustainable solutions. The team aspires to create a pool of young change-makers who will bring out the change in the society in long run through their ideas of local global sustainable enterprises.

Himalayan Journey 

The central focus of the Yatra is to meet those real heroes who have created entrepreneurial success stories in Himalayan region. In addition to these meetings explaining champions’ lifestyles and their difficult journeys in creating the enterprises, we shall have numerous workshops, discussions, presentations and competitions to further enhance our understanding of Entrepreneurship. Occasional halts for fun, adventure and visits to historical places are also planned to make the Yatra more spicy! We shall spend mornings of our days at our Champion’s institutes and listen to their stories.

We are expected to meet a dynamic group of Champions working in the field of Agriculture, Tourism, Skill Development & Education, Energy etc. As our focus is on innovative utilization of local resources and enterprise building with the help of local communities, we have planned to visit setups following similar development pattern in the innermost parts of the hilly state.

In Agriculture field, we plan to visit an innovative model of farmers’ federation that is creating wealth at local level and is helping to reduce migration. In Tourism, we shall visit a unique public private partnership (PPP) model that is earning good revenue with the help of local community .

About the Author

As CEO & co-founder of Serve Happiness, Nitin oversees strategy and management for the company. Nitin has a proven record in academia, technology startups and social sector in Europe and INDIA. Nitin received a bachelor’s in Computer Engineering from DDIT, Gujarat and attended IIIT Bangalore where he earned a M.Tech in Information Technology. He is also an Linnaeus Palme scholarship awardee during which he attended Malmo University, Sweden.

Nitin is both an Startup Weekend and Startup 2020 alumni and his teams had been runners up and winners at these programs. He always find happiness while working towards bringing positive change in society.Taking first step towards this He led and set up HMP Foundation (A Non Profit Organization) to improve health and education for poor people in rural areas. Nitin is also part of non profit start up Openfuel.org which promotes entrepreneurship. In his free time Nitin loves to do cycling, traveling and playing cricket with kids.