Yes Foundation felicitated social film makers

Yes Foundation, the social development arm of Yes Bank organized ‘Yes! I am the Change’ (YIAC) Awards at Nehru Centre, Mumbai felicitating the winners who expressed social issues through motion pictures.

YIAC is a social film-making challenge conducted for the third year by Yes Foundation. Under the challenge, contestants are given a topic and 101 hours to make a social movie. Categorised under five heads- Corporate, Not-for-Profit, Student, Open and Popular Choice, the competition received over 3400 film entries across India and a participation of five lakh youth.

The competition aims at change in mindset of people and public sensitization towards social issues of the country. “Mindset change is very essential for a better India. The high quality social films produced by five lakh youth are insightful and heart-felt and are already inspiring ripples of change,” says Prerana Langa, CEO, Yes Foundation.

Actress Vidya Balan was the chief guest for the event. A panel discussion was held between entrepreneurs, corporate leaders and Bollywood celebrities like director Vikas Behl and Meghna Gulzar to discuss the change movies can bring about in the societal mindset.

A new award category was introduced to honour previous award winners who started working in the social sector after making movies in previous YIAC challenges. Kuljeet Chaudhary, an IT professional and YIAC participant from 2014, started ‘Samarpan’ an informal network of over 1200 volunteers who rescue animals in distress.  Another participant from 2014, Leena Kejriwal started a nation-wide campaign addressing the issues of female child trafficking called-‘Missing’. Both were awarded as the Changemakers.

The movies are available online for use to anyone for social awareness.