The Stargazers Foundation
The Stargazers Foundation is a not for profit organization founded in 2011.
IT Works towards identifying, preserving, and putting to use important aspects of human capital that are often excluded from entering the mainstream economy.
Organization
Via partnerships, mentoring programs, and business incubators, Stargazers works directly with individuals towards uplifting them, and with organizations towards capacitating them with concrete tools towards integrating innovation within themselves.
Founder Dr. Miniya Chatterji has stepped out of an ACTIVE role in Stargazers. She provides Stargazers with leadership and direction. She works at the World Economic Forum in Geneva.
Work
Gender Gap Assessment Program
Stargazers has created a simple and highly scientific tool that assesses gender related gaps in the working conditions, aspirations, potential, productivity, and leadership of organizations' workforce. This tool has been adopted by UN Women as a self-assessment tool for providing the Gender Equity Certificate to organizations in 60 companies in Egypt.
Stargazers believes that gender gap is far beyond a mere head count issue, and instead must lie in the core of any organization's business strategy so as to increase the organization's productivity, its revenues, as well as the well-being of employees.
Towards this objective, Stargazers offers the GES Tool—an in-depth and scientific gender equity self-assessment tool— for organizations to assess their gender gaps and include gender-related considerations in their overall business strategy and planning.
Star Network
In India, Stargazers is tapping in to two rich resources in India: young Indian women in the private sector who have successfully balanced major professional achievements along side a healthy personal life, and young women innovators or those with creative business ideas living in rural India.
By bridging the two groups via a simple intimate one-to-one mentorship program, both learn from each other and engage in self-chosen activities, raise funds, or combine resources towards actualizing ideas and projects.
Stargazers Fellowship Program
The Stargazers Fellowship is located at top universities of the world offered to candidates of Indian citizenship belonging to low-income groups and with a substantial record of driving change in their local community.
The Fellowship is designed to shape future leaders who contribute locally and think globally. It equips the student with the skills they need to benefit their local communities, at the same time ensuring their own long-term future as educated, employed, and financially independent members of society.
Female candidates are especially encouraged to apply, on the basis that they are the most likely agents of change for their local communities. Many development organisations now accept that when young women thrive, everyone around them thrives as well, and standards of living rise for the entire community.
The Fellowship at King's College London is offered for an 11 month Master’s Degree in a subject of the student’s choice. It will include a three month English language and technology orientation course prior to departure for London; an in-year mentorship programme in London; and two six month social service internship programmes, the first in the student’s community in India, and the second in a community in Africa after completion of the degree.
The Stargazers Foundation is raising funds for this Special Grassroots Leadership Education Fellowship.
Partnerships
Stargazers has partnerships with Nestlé, International Labour Organization, UN Women, King's College London, 100 Women in Hedge Funds, and Winentretien.