Five Indian Americans named as 2018 Echoing Green Fellows

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Out of the 35 Echoing Green Fellows this year, five are Indian Americans including Sibjan Chaulagain, Purvi Shah, Shubham Choudhary, Atif Javed and Aziz Alghunaim.

On its website, Echoing Green says that it identifies tomorrow’s leaders today through its Fellowships and other leadership initiatives as it selects emerging leaders and invests in their success to accelerate their impact and talent that will eventually make the world a better place.

Chaulagain is a 2018 Climate Fellow and is the Founder of ICT for Agri Pvt. Ltd., which provides precise and localized information on climate-smart crop advisory, input suppliers, weather forecast, and market price through an SMS and mobile platform called Krishi Guru and connects farmers in Nepal to their local extension agencies, input suppliers, market traders and agricultural experts.

According to Echoing Green’s website, Chaulagain wants to ensure food security in Nepal by providing localized crop information to farmers and connecting them to suppliers, traders, experts and farmer cooperatives through mobile technology.

Chaulagain is the managing director of ICT for Agri Pvt Ltd. and founded the company in 2014 after spending two years as a computer teacher and a farmer in his rural village.

Shah is a 2018 Black Male Achievement Fellow and is the founder of Movement Law Lab, which is building a new generation of legal visionaries to tackle America’s toughest racial justice challenges: economic inequality, immigration, mass incarceration, and climate change, helping entrepreneurial lawyers by sharing brilliant ideas about how law can build the power of social movements, get their ventures off the ground and grow to scale.

According to Echoing Green’s website, Shah wants to build power in black and brown communities by incubating legal projects that combine law and community organizing to protect, defend, and embolden racial justice movements.

Shah is an experienced racial justice lawyer, founded Movement Law to seed a new generation of legal problem-solvers to tackle America’s toughest racial justice challenges.

Choudhary is a 2018 Global Fellow and the founder of Safe Access, which is building an ecosystem to advance equitable health care for the LGBTQ community in India by training and sensitizing health professionals and aims to equip health care professionals with the knowledge and tools to serve the LGBTQ community competently and compassionately in a safe and nondiscriminatory environment.

According to Echoing Green’s website, Choudhary wants to reduce health disparities among the LGBTQ population in India by providing health professionals with sensitivity training and facilitating access to health care using web-based technology.

Choudhary is the founder and executive director of Safe Access and he has done a lot of community service in both India and the U.S.

Javed and Alghunaim are both 2018 Global Fellow and are co-founders of Tarjimly, a bilingual messaging app that instantly connects the world’s 23 million refugees with translators who can help them integrate and communicate with medics, lawyers and aid workers, as they both want to eliminate language barriers between refugees and NGOs in Europe and North America by making it easy for bilingual people to volunteer as remote real-time translators.

Javed is leading the growth and business development efforts of Tarjimly while Algunaim leads the technical product development efforts.

Javed has volunteered for refugee and immigrant families in Boston during the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015 and Algunaim previously worked as a software engineer in Silicon Valley.