Impact Careers post Gandhi Fellowship: An Alumni Rendezvous!

Prologue

Today’s world gives a clarion call for having a successful career, but of what use could this enormous success be, if we are not sure of impacting lives and ecosystems through our work. There would be this eternal confusion amongst a lot of youngsters if they could either have a successful career or just a life-impacting career; or “wait a minute; did you say, having both is possible?”?

Well, fortunately for us; with more fluidic and ever evolving dimensions of work transcending boundaries of various sectors, it is now possible to impact lives and the way people think and shape their lives. It was this idea that formed our central core during the interaction with about 75-80 earnest young women about to unleash their potential and impact the world with their skills and capabilities.?

Chapter-1: Our Alumni?

Accompanying me were our beloved alumni, Mr. Prakhar Jain, and Ms. Manasi Joshi, both alumni of Gandhi Fellowship and currently performing high impact roles delivering a lot of value to their respective ecosystems. While Mr. Prakhar specializes in consulting high-value clients for CSR initiatives (as part of Sattva Consulting- Home - Sattva Consulting); Ms. Manasi delves deeply into transforming ecosystems fully immersing herself as the Program Director of Parinaam Foundation (Parinaam - Parinaam Foundation).?

Chapter-2: The Interaction?

With such vibrant diversity and impact professionals in the house, how can the energy not spillover and diffuse amongst our audience. The event progressed with a fun icebreaker setting the tone for the day; a complete 1-hour interactive two-way communication between us and our student friends. The thought process and ideas our young friends were teeming with were on full display throughout the session, by virtue of the incisive questions they posed and the clarifications they sought in our protagonists’ journey.?

Chapter-3: The Manasi Methodology?

Upon setting the context of the Gandhi Fellowship program and the stages of recruitment involved, the stage set off on another tangent with our protagonists delving deeper into their journey.?

Manasi kickstarted the air of nostalgia with interesting anecdotes and funny archives from her entry into the Fellowship and how those hardships ensured her resilient streak, coming to the forefront in the subsequent years. She shared interesting memories and candid interactions with her parents, friends, and peers during the time of joining and how it gradually transformed over the years.?

Her metamorphosis from a simple Delhi University student to a full-fledged professional with many success stories to her credit was complete during those two years of the Fellowship, laced with tough struggles, innumerable hardships, and multiple doubts on self throughout the period. However, it all came to fruition with her successful entry into professional life with a stint at Udhyam Learning Foundation delving deeper into understanding the Education Policy for our school children. It was this stint that helped her strengthen her policy knowledge which propelled her to work closely with the Delhi Government on the Entrepreneurship Mindset Curriculum.?

Post that, she went further down the path to fully immerse herself in community transformation through education in her current role. What stood apart for our audience in her story was how the Fellowship played an especially significant role in solidifying her stints at her workplace and how it laid a solid foundation for her knowledge base.??

Chapter-4: The Prakhar Pathway?

If Manasi left our friends spellbound with her impact story; then Prakhar took a leap further on speaking his mind and being candid about his entry into the Fellowship and how it was a very casual call with no serious planning and goals.?

However, the ecosystems he was a part of and the encounters he had there shaped him into the professional consultant he is today, efficiently planning multiple projects for clients in a moment. How he transformed post the Fellowship into the impact consultant he is today, is something that all the students could relate to and identify themselves with. The high impact moments from his Fellowship journey were beautifully highlighted by him, allowing the students to reflect seriously and deliberate upon certain points.?

What was more enthralling was the way Prakhar enthused our audience into opening for questions and feeling free to discuss with them whatever thought that crossed their mind. This eventually led to a barrage of questions based on their individual journeys and how their Fellowship journey propelled them into their current roles.?

Chapter-5: Conclusions and the Way Forward?

With two impact stories coming their way, the audience were really enthused and inspired to take a leap of faith into having their own impact journey and it was tied up immaculately by our alumni as to how Gandhi Fellowship served as the starting point for their respective impact stories.?

We concluded the day with clarifications on the application process for the Gandhi Fellowship, the various stages of recruitment and the best way forward to go ahead with the application process.??

Epilogue

This was one event that played a crucial role in highlighting the importance of having alumni and their journey as the focal point of our conversation and how it could inspire the audience and play a role in elaborating their understanding of the Gandhi Fellowship and its objectives.?

With sincere thanks to Mr. Asgar Ahmed and the placement team of Mount Carmel College, we look forward to having many more such events with the institution onboarding our rich and diverse alumni cohort to interact with bright young minds, eager and ever ready to change the world.?