Who said young teenage girls can’t do what many adults aren’t able to do? These two girls from Namma Ooru are reaching for the stars with their new social projects, which they recently took to the United Nations headquarters in New York. Nikita Nambiar and Sanjana Tarigopula from the 1M1B’s Future Leaders both had their unique sets of ideas to change the world one at a time. Nikita has been working on her project named ‘Fresh Start’ which involved working with women inmates in Tumkur jail and skilling them to make Tanjore paintings. Sanjana Tarigopula, a ninth grader who created support group therapy for Autistic kids and their families through her project named ‘Divyang’ and helped in spreading awareness about autism.
Sanjana says her inspiration for the project was more a journey. “In Grade 5, I read the book ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in The Nighttime’ in which the main character is autistic. After this, my exposure to autism kept increasing by attending multiple TED Talks. But the key turning point was in Grade 8 when Sneha (name changed) who was diagnosed with autism moved into the house opposite mine and as I saw other people reacted to her, a slightly uncomfortable feeling grew within me. I soon realized that due to the lack of awareness, acceptance, and resources for people with autism, life becomes incredibly difficult for them and their families. Without getting that first-hand experience, I would not have been as driven to work on this project.”
While, Nikita’s journey to starting her project was a little bit different than Sanjana’s as she had watched a documentary on the hardships faced by incarcerated women and their families on TV, which highlighted the economic, relational, and emotional repercussions of family member incarceration and how that impacts their social and civic life. She says, “The documentary left me deeply saddened, though I wanted to help them. At that point in time, I did not know how. But, when I joined the Future leader’s program, My mentors helped me realise that today’s youth has the capability to do anything that they set their mind to, that there is no impossible, and age should not be a deterring factor. This gave me the courage and strength to get started and get going.”
But, apart from changing the world, these girls like dancing and also like running small-scale businesses. We can look at some future entrepreneur’s right here.
Speaking about 1M1B’s Future Leaders at UN Headquarters in New York, Manav Subodh, Co-Founder, 1M1B said, “We are very excited to conclude our inaugural campaign. This has been an extraordinary journey and we are now ready to expand the initiative to many schools in different countries. These young leaders are helping us to achieve our goal of activating a million young leaders and entrepreneurs who will drive a billion people out of poverty and achieve United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s)”
