2002
Chetna Gala Sinha
Founder and Chair
Mann Deshi Foundation
Chetna Gala Sinha is an activist, farmer, and banker. In the early 1980s, while still a student in Mumbai, she joined the Jayaprakash Narayan movement and travelled through the country championing land rights and other social issues. In 1996, Chetna founded the Mann Deshi Foundation in Mhaswad, a drought-stricken area of Maharashtra, with the aim of economically and socially empowering rural women. In 1997, she set up the Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank - India’s first bank for and by rural women.
Today, the Mann Deshi Bank has over 100,000 account holders, has loaned over $50 million, and regularly creates new financial products to support the needs of female micro-entrepreneurs. It has received the 2006 Microfinance Process Excellence Award, the 2014 Best Eco-Tech Bank Award by the Indian Bank Association and the 2015 'Best Bank Award' by the Maharashtra Urban Cooperative Banks Federation.
The 2002 World Fellows
Eighteen emerging international leaders have been awarded the first Yale World Fellowships and will spend the fall 2002 semester in a new global leadership program at Yale University. “The Yale World Fellows have already played significant roles in shaping their countries and professions,” said Yale President Richard C. Levin. “This new Yale program will give them an educational experience that will help equip them for important positions of leadership in the decades ahead.” The World Fellows Program is a major component of Yale’s broader initiative to become a global university. Selected from over 500 applications from more than 100 countries, from Albania to Zimbabwe, the Fellows are as diverse in background as...Read More
