Yatesh Yadav

Founder

Yatesh Yadav is the founder of Manjari Foundation (2015)[1], an Indian non-profit working on women & children, livelihood, rural & agriculture and education from Bhilwara.

Yatesh Yadav is an Indian rural development practitioner and a co-founder of the Manjari Foundation, a non-governmental organisation registered in 2015 that works with rural communities in India through women-led collectives and livelihood institutions. He was the foundation's first director, and founded it alongside Sanjay Kumar and Shouvik Mitra, all of them former staff of the rural development organisation PRADAN.

Early life and education

Yadav holds a bachelor's degree in agricultural engineering from G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology in Uttarakhand, and a master's degree in business administration specialising in project management.

Career

Yadav has worked for more than three decades in rural development in India and abroad, including assignments in Afghanistan and Kenya. His areas of work include community-led microfinance, agriculture, natural resource management and rural enterprise.

He worked with PRADAN in India and later held leadership positions at the Centre for Microfinance in Jaipur. In Afghanistan he was head of financial inclusion at the Aga Khan Foundation and led projects on women's economic empowerment funded by the World Bank and the Afghan Ministry of Women's Affairs.

In 2015 he was among the founders of the Manjari Foundation, where he served as first director. He has also served on the board of Ibtada, a development organisation in Alwar, Rajasthan, and later became its executive director.[2][3][4]

Manjari Foundation

Manjari Foundation was set up in May 2015 by alumni of PRADAN and works on building women's institutions - self-help groups, village organisations and federations - as the base for rural development. Its programmes cover livelihoods, agriculture, education, health and nutrition, WASH, renewable energy and women-owned social enterprises. It publishes annual reports, financial reports and FCRA returns on its website.

Manjari Foundation reports the following, on its own site:

Manjari Foundation's programmes have empowered over 12.44 lakh people, mainly women, through 8,567 self-help groups, 895 village organisations and 23 federations.
Manjari Foundation has supported over 18,000 families in enhancing their incomes through sustainable livelihood programmes.
Manjari Foundation has trained and built the capacities of 1,466 school teachers and over 50,000 students.