Amitabh Shah, Founder, Yuva-Unstoppable

Friday March 06, 2009 , 3 min Read

Poverty, corruption, poor infrastructure, illiteracy, child labour and a horde of other abominable factors have plagued our country for a long time now. But how many of us have realized the need to actually bring about a reformation in the society to curb these retrogressive elements? Just a handful. Yuva-Unstoppable, a non-profit organisation, is just one among the few. The organisation spearheaded a movement to make the country’s youth more affable in their approach to the society.

The motive was to help the youth become kinder by adopting the ‘pass it on’ concept. Yuva provided a platform to volunteers and involved them into random acts of kindness; buying ice-cream for a policeman, cleaning local neighbourhoods,

giving roses to strangers on streets and the like. It aimed at inspiring people to change the world by being kinder; to create a mega decentralized kindness movement all over the world.

Yuva-Unstoppable, is a volunteer bank in itself, which helps various NGOs to enlighten the lives of the poor children. “We do not believe that today’s youth is useless, they are just used less. If you contribute just two hours of your 168 hours in the week to out project, you can help make a difference to the society and spread smiles,” said Amitabh Shah, Founder, Yuva-Unstoppable.

Ever since its inception, Yuva’s mission has been to create and provide volunteers to any organization (NGO, NPO, Social Institute, Government’s Social Organization, etc) or individual working towards their vision of enlightening the poor children. It aspires to be in every city where young people want to make a difference.

The organisation presently operates in nine cities across the country including Ahmedabad, Baroda, Bombay, Vallabh Vidyanagar and Khedbrahma, and has strength of 3,000 volunteers that help close to 8,000 physically challenged, poor and orphan children.

And who benefits from the services of Yuva-Unstoppble? “While the children are provided with value-based education, nutrition and health care, it is the country’s youth that is becoming more compassionate and socially responsible,” explained Shah.

Yuva-Unstoppable aims to have 25,000 member volunteers by 2010 and wants to work towards the development of over 100,000 children. But for an undertaking so noble as this one ought to have faith in themselves. It is always advisable to follow the footsteps of those who have done it before.

As of now, the NGO is attempting to move forward in other cities by holding 5 presentations a week, making registration every Sunday and by encouraging acts of kindness every Monday night.

Surprisingly, Yuva in Ahmedabad has a staff of only five, who are more like volunteers considering they get peanuts for the amount of work they do. “Not that they don’t have better job offers; it’s just their passion for social service motivates them to give their best and move along with the organisation’s goal,” said Shah.