In an effort to give back the city its due, a group non-resident Indians (NRIs) have joined hands to promote city at global level on various international forums and formed a charitable trust, Nagpur First Charitable Trust’ to support the wcause through various projects.

Dinesh Jain, a city engineer who is now settled in Naperville, USA, is the brain behind the effort. Speaking about the trust Jain said that Nagpur First’ is a platform to bring all Nagpurians, now living anywhere in the world and wishing to take the cause of the city, to contribute their bit for development of the city.

“The trust is bringing industrialists, businessmen, engineers and entrepreneurs from city and abroad to put in financial as well as academic help for the initiative,” he said. Being a former student of the Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT), Jain is also seeking help of his alma mater for the ambitious project. He is in city to rope in as much support as possible from local people and will be holding a series of programmes in next few days. Two individuals from city who are helping him in the effort are Amit Badiyani and Kushroo Poacha.

“It is basically an effort to brand Nagpur in the world and present it to the international community as a upcoming global city. Our supports are already negotiating the concept of a international sister city organisation’ with the highest officials in cities where they are residing. We have also formed a Yahoo group which picks up all good news about city and publishes it on the website, www.nagpurfirst.org,” Jain said. Students can specially benefit from the trust as it will provide them development opportunities through student exchange programmes.

Vivek Bhagwatkar, Aniket Kaloti, Nishant Somalwar, Shashank Rao are lending a hand to the group of NRIs in their initiative. The trust will be providing help in both kind and cash to organisations and individuals interested in joining the forum.