At the age of 23, Ahmedabad-born Yale graduate Amitabh Shah turned his back on a job offer from JPMorgan Banking and exchanged a potentially lavish life on wall street for life on the real streets of India. In 2005, shortly after leaving his Ivy League life behind, Amitabh founded YUVA Unstoppable, a nonprofit that is dedicated to transforming the lives of underprivileged children by feeding and educating them, primarily through transforming schools.
YUVA stands for Youth Upliftment Volunteer Association and their main focus is on upgrading basic infrastructure and facilities in schools to encourage attendance. They are also committed to providing food, scholarships, digital literacy programmes and access to career counselling.
YUVA has created a simple approach to the challenges they face in India. Their survey team starts by going to a school to assess what needs improving. Often there are 300 to 600 students attending a school with no access to drinking water, no bathrooms and no shelter from extreme weather.
Once assessed, YUVA plans upgrades together with the teaching staff and funds them through partnerships with top institutes like UNICEF, Google, KPMG and FCI London. To date, YUVA has upgraded 3500 schools across 41 cities in India, impacting the lives of 1 million children. CEO of FCI, Firdaus Nagree, has been involved with YUVA since 2018 and a share of FCI’s annual profits go to them.
This is an exceptionally large amount. While many charities have large overheads of justifiable costs, often 30-40% of the funds at most get through to the actual projects.
To funnel 95% of income into their projects is down to Amitabh’s experience and his commitment to leveraging things in the right way. Despite being the founder and Chief Inspiration Officer, he doesn’t take a salary from the organisation. YUVA does global fundraising with a specific focus on the UK.
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Firdaus first met Amitabh 5 years ago. “At first I thought, BS. Nobody is this good,” he says of their initial meeting. But he did some research and spent time getting to know Amitabh. “I realised that with Amitabh, what you see is what you get. There’s no agenda other than 100% energy and determination to uplift these kids.”
Firdaus immediately came on board, creating a profit share programme through FCI. FCI’s development team based in India also got involved. Led by operations manager Rajesh Chhoda, they visited schools to speak to the students and offered career counselling and inspirational talks.
Firdaus says Amitabh’s simple approach and determination to put the money where it’s needed have inspired him to share the YUVA message far and wide. “Building bathrooms might seem simple, but the impact they have is incomparable. Keeping kids in school impacts not only their futures but that of their families. Every extra hour, every extra day that they’re in school has a multiplying effect on their whole lives. By the time they’re in their 20s, instead of sweeping the streets, they might be doing clerical work or data entry. It completely changes what their futures could look like.”
YUVA aims to upgrade 20 schools per year at £10k per school. FCI London contributes towards this target. If you'd like to help them reach their target, you can find out more here.
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