Venkatesh Murthy

Venkatesh Murthy founded Youth for Seva in Bengaluru in April 2007, after twelve years working in the software industry in the United States, where he was struck by how routine community service was in ordinary American life. He returned to India in early 2007 intending to build something equivalent for Indian young people, drawing also on the older idea of runa, the debts a person owes to teachers, ancestors, nature and society.

His diagnosis was that young Indians were willing to volunteer but were stopped by three things: not knowing where to begin, fearing they would be handed more responsibility than they could carry, and not having much time. Youth for Seva was designed around those obstacles. Rather than running its own field projects at first, it matched volunteers to existing NGOs by interest, location and available hours, and offered graded commitments — a few hours a week through the year, an intensive stint over a semester break, a stipended fellowship of several months, or remote contributions in writing, design or web work. Murthy frames this as individual social responsibility rather than delegation to institutions, the idea being that each person takes charge of conditions in their own neighbourhood. Around 1,100 volunteers had been engaged by 2008, and a partnership with the Times of India's Teach India campaign mobilised over 2,000 more across Bengaluru's government schools and slums.

The organisation has since grown into a national volunteering network with chapters in a dozen cities, running its own programmes in education, health, environment, livelihoods and rural development, including community learning centres, school adoption, career guidance, bridge courses, spoken English classes, health awareness and telemedicine in rural areas. Murthy remains its founder and chief mentor.[2][3]