Bangalore, India - March 2017 - On 17 March Fr V.M. Thomas, SDB, Superior of the Province of Guwahati (ING) and President of the Conference of Religious of India, was unanimously elected President of the NGO "Functional Vocational Training and Research Society" (FVTRS), which provides training for employment to disadvantaged young people. Founded in 1993, FVTRS has given professional training to about 120,000 disadvantaged young people and educated over 10,000 young people through the NIOS programme. Currently it has several new initiatives in place such as "SKILL NET" with 50,000 members working in 20 states of India to introduce young people to work. In 25 years FVTRS has successfully implemented 963 projects in 20 states of India with the collaboration of about 150 partners.