Ishita Chaudhry
India
Ishita Chaudhry is an Ashoka Fellow and the Founder and Executive Director of The YP Foundation (TYPF) in New Delhi. TYPF is a youth-led and -run nonprofit in India founded in 2002 that enables young people to create community-based programmes and influence policies that increase their access to information and services that ensure their health and human rights. TYPF has worked with more than 350,000 young people from 18 states across India with a key focus on advancing the leadership of young women and adolescents who are out-of-school. Ishita is also a Founding Member of RESURJ (Realizing Sexual and Reproductive Justice) and has served as an Abstract Reviewer for the AIDS 2014 Conference, the Technical Resource Group for the National Adolescent Strategy on Health for the Ministry of Family Health and Welfare and UNFPA/India (2012-2013) and the Technical Advisory Committee of Asia Pacific Research for reviewing the status of school-based Comprehensive Sexuality Education for UNESCO, UNFPA and UNICEF (2013). Ishita served as a member of UNESCO’s Global Advisory Group for Sexuality Education (2010 – 2012) and the civil society group that in 2009 developed the National Strategic Framework for HIV Prevention for India’s National AIDS Control Organization. She serves on the Advisory Board of the Hindi Edition of Reproductive Health Matters (RHM), Jagori’s Safe Delhi Initiative and the Board of Directors of CREA India. Ishita has developed programmes on young people for UNAIDS Geneva, UNODC South Asia, Ford Foundation, the Development Communication Division of Doordarshan, Government of Nagaland, UNDP and UNICEF in India. She is the recipient of the Change Looms Award for Social Entrepreneurship from The Ashoka Foundation (2009). the INK Fellowship in association with TED, the Seen and Heard Award from British Telecom and the UK Youth Parliament (2008), the Karamveer Puruskaar – National Award for Social Justice and Action in India (2007) and is the first Indian youth to receive the Young Achiever’s award from the President of Nepal (2009). Ishita graduated with an Honours Degree in English Literature from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University. She is passionate about catching up with sleep, reading voraciously and used to be a musician in a former life.
Organization: YP Foundation
Organization website: http://www.theypfoundation.org
Country: India
