Catching Up!1

I’ve just come back from an evening of having met up with 10 YP Alumni, who worked with us anywhere between 3-5 years ago. We caught up over the little details, the happy memories, the recurring arguments, absorbed how we had grown, changed, made a difference in our own ways, each of us having found (or in the process of trying to find) our place in the world. For me, this moment is more than about affirmation. It is recognition of the work that these young people have built in The YP Foundation since its founding in 2002 and the transitions they have overseen. It is almost with a huge sense of pride that I watch many of them work in development spaces today – some are lawyers, others are studying and a few are transitioning from non-profit work to working with the government at a state level.

Earlier this evening, one of the groups struck up a conversation about how the YP has given us the space to make realizations that we often take for granted today about the lack of power, rights and privilege faced by young people and what we can each do, in order to change that. Many of them notice the changes it has made in their approach to their work, their sensibilities, their decisions, and experienced shock when they graduated and actually saw how excluded young people are from development and policy spaces in India. They realized how much needs to be done to ensure that all young people’s human rights can be recognized. We rested on the agreement that there are far too many gaps between young people who work at the field level, with communities and at larger international policy tables, or those who live in the glasshouse comfort of their homes.

What we’ve learned through our years at The YP Foundation, I think, was not that all young people are the same or have the same values, but that building bridges between differences and diversities is where a youth movement, or a proactive movement of change for and by young people, lies.

When I look at these friends and colleagues whom I have mentored and trained at different points and times throughout their lives, and who have trained and challenged and taught me as well, I have no doubt that they will impact the years to come in India in solid, concrete and positive ways. We’ve grown so much, from where we first where, when we came together- in how we respect and understand ourselves, and each other. And yet, the fundamental understanding that we shifted as people in the years that we worked together at the YP remains as common thread – one that I think will bind all of us, for a long time to come.

TYPF is about helping young people help themselves, to challenge the world around them, to change it for the better. Our relationships with our work are about our relationships with those we have worked with, and the solidarity we have learned so much more about. I complete 8 years of working with this organization on the 26th of July 2010. I can almost trace for you, the trajectory of growth I have made. I could imagine a lot of different decisions, choices and possibilities, but I cannot imagine never having met these people. I met them here, at the YP.

Ishita Chaudhry
Chief Executive Officer