Tata Jagriti Yatra ’2008′ – awakening the spirit of YOUTH entrepreneurship

24th December 2008 – 11th January 2009 Tata Jagriti Yatra ’08 is an annual train journey that will take 350 of India’s highly motivated youth (with some participation of international students) between the ages of 18-25 on a eighteen day national odyssey, introducing them to unsung heroes of India. The aim is to awaken the spirit of entrepreneurship – both social and economic – within India’s youth by exposing them to individuals and institutions that are developing unique solutions to India’s challenges. Through this national event we will inspire them to lead and develop institutions nationally and within their communities.

Youth are increasingly celebrity-conscious, while those Indians who have made lasting social and economic impact are often not visible as role models. Tata Jagriti Yatra ’08 aims to showcase inspiring success stories by taking young Indians to meet these “real heroes”. These role models, located around the country particularly in rural and semi-urban India will demonstrate how social and economic enterprise has succeeded. We propose to engage the national media to act as a multiplier of this message by projecting it to the millions of Indians who will watch this journey unfold across the country, and become an annual event. With this we seek to awaken the aspiration of ‘being the change’ in the youth of India.

Starting from Bombay and traversing the length and breadth of the country to return to Bombay on 18 days later. The journey will pass through major Indian metro’s and also stop off at more rural locations to visit innvoative initiatives such as Tilonia, an ideal village set up by a well known Indian social entrepreneur named Bunker Roy, as well as many other places of interest and institutes where technology, policy and social innovation is transforming the face of India. The map below shows our proposed train route.

http://www.jagritiyatra.com/

http://www.jagritiyatra.com/blog/

http://www.jagritiyatra.com/newsletter/

http://twitter.com/JagritiYatra

Footnote: The Power of Twitter and the ‘social web’

This is how it all started: I awoke to this Tweet from http://twitter.com/darenBBC this morning; 

10 minutes later I reached out to Jagriti Yatra and kept Daren in the loop via Twitter DM

The Outcome: We are now in direct email contact with Tata Jagriti Yatra.

Whilst all of this was going on I was in a ‘real-time’ Skype chat with zyOzy Foundation founder team member Sunita Lal http://www.retaggr.com/card/Sunita and Rubin Harris http://www.retaggr.com/card/rubenharris explaining what was unfolding.

Special Thanks to: http://twitter.com/darenBBC and http://twitter.com/ and the Universe