Udayan Shalini Fellowships’ (USF) derives its name by conjoining two Sanskrit words, “Udayan” and “Shalini”, meaning ‘eternal sunrise’ and ‘a dignified woman’ respectively. It symbolises an eternal sunrise to a dignified life for a girl, who otherwise would have lost track. Udayan Shalini Fellowships started in 2002 and is presently running 26 branches at Jaipur, Aurangabad, Gurugram, North Delhi,
Chennai, Hydrabad, Greater Noida, Dehradun, Kolkata, Kurukshetra, Phagwara, Panchkula, South Delhi, South Mumbai, Baddi, Bangaluru, Vadodara, Thane, Pune, Haridwar, Noida, Ahmedabad, Agra, Nashik, East Delhi, Faridabad. The programme has been a tremendous success and impacted the lives of more than 9000 girls. In practice the Fellowship is a unique academic excellence and personality development programme for deserving and talented girls from weak socio-economic background aiming to turn them into empowered and dignified women or Shalinis. Each Fellow stays in the programme till she finishes her course. Udayan Shalini Fellows are given monetary and mentoring support to continue their academics while undergoing a slew of vocational trainings. The uniqueness of USF lies in the fact that it goes beyond being a usual scholarship programme by supporting higher education and providing regular mentoring and leadership development training, inculcating a sense of social responsibility in the selected talented girls. With guidance from more than 120 mentors and armed with rigorous trainings, many Fellows of Kolkata have gone on to pursue prestigious career as Engineers, Doctors, Professionals, CAs, Scientists e.t.c. Our Shalinis are our pride and we are happy to bring smiles on girls who deserve better.
