All for a cause: UoH alumnus selected for William J Clinton Fellowship

They say virtue and selflessness are their own rewards, and 27-year-old Sumedha Goswami stands as the perfect example for the adage. An alumnus of the University of Hyderabad, Goswami is selected for the American India Foundation (AIF)’s William J. Clinton Fellowship for Service in India.

This 10-month fellowship recruits highly-skilled young professionals associated with leading NGOs in the country to create projects for development. Out of the 35 fellows who will be recruited, only 10 are Indians. The rate of acceptance is only four per cent of the total number of applicants.

Associated with the Salaam Bombay Foundation, Mumbai, Goswami will be training slum children in video and filmmaking so they can make videos on the issues faced by their own community.  “I have made a conscious choice of getting into the development sector. Not many prefer it because the pay is less,” she says.

Since childhood, Goswami has been different from the rest. While her friends got into engineering, she never imagined doing something she didn’t like. “I wanted to become a doctor because medicine, too, is a kind of social service. When that didn’t work out, I still wanted to give back to the society in some way. I took up English Honours in college, and later communication studies, which deals with development. Most students considered it boring but it interested me,” she says.

Sumedha’s love for interacting with people from different cultures was also her motivation for choosing the development sector. She has previously worked with organisations such as Mahita and Video Volunteers, where a colleague introduced her to the AIF fellowship. Sumedha anticipates that the most challenging part for her in the upcoming fellowship will be the language.

“I am used to speaking in English and to translate the photography and videography jargon to an indigenous language is going to be quite tough,” explains the girl from Jharkhand, who is very excited on getting such a rare opportunity.

“I have always been an average student — at school and at college. So when I got selected for this fellowship, I was overwhelmed. I couldn’t believe it at first,” she admits. The fellowship starts on September 3, for which Goswami will be flying to Delhi to attend an orientation programme after which she will travel to Mumbai to be with the organisation.