Meet The Young Changemakers Awarded For Driving Social Change

This National Youth Day, The Tale of Humankind, has selected 15 young changemakers from across India for the first edition of its Changemaker Awards. The initiative’s aim is to acknowledge and applaud the efforts of young changemakers who are going above and beyond to sustain a positive change in the community and work to make this world a better place to live for everyone.

Be it Steve Jobs and Malala Yousafzai, or Thomas Edison and Martin Luther King Jr, outliers have proved time and again that it pays to think differently and challenge the status quo. In a world that keeps telling almost every young person, “you can’t”, it’s critical to have a flow of stories and role models that show “you can”, and that provide an array of ideas and methods.

The Tale of Humankind is a youth-led organisation, started by school students, to engage, inspire and empower young people to be part of the change. Built on collaboration and focused on capacity building, we are a passionately driven youth leadership initiative to enable, connect, and engage youth advocates to start the conversation and move from ideas to action.

Aniket Gupta and Seher Taneja, Co-Founders of The Tale of Humankind say, “The efforts of the young changemakers to change mindsets and behavior of society towards positive change is an inspiration to our country’s youth.

“We need to support young changemakers like these and also share their stories widely to help every teenager see this emerging need for a changemaker mindset and skillset in order to strive in our exponentially changing world.”

Coming from diverse backgrounds, 15 young people, going above and beyond in their daily life to create and sustain positive change, are recognised with The Changemaker Awards 2022. This carefully selected cohort of young changemakers is changing the definition of “success” for young people in an exponentially changing world.

So, who are these Indian changemakers driving social change? The 15 young changemakers shortlisted from India come from diverse backgrounds.

Aditya Dubey, Akarsh Shroff, Aripina Jayalakshmi, Deepanjali Sahu, Manan Sharma, Naman Sonpar, Kavya Gupta, Namya Joshi, Priyaswara Bharti, Rishabh Singh, Rishikesh Amit Nayak, Saleha Khan, Shailendra Singh, Sia Godika, Siya Tayal — all have come up with great initiatives that are spearheading change in the social sector.

Having already identified the problems, built teams and created positive change in their communities, these young changemakers are best positioned to steer the movement to spread the culture of changemaking and to reimagine how we define “success” for individuals, communities and countries.

Here is an account of seven of these changemakers who are doing their bit to address various issues, be it in the environment, gender, health, education, child rights, agriculture, arts & culture and animal rights among others, through their initiatives.

1. Aditya Dubey | Plant A Million Trees, Delhi

After experiencing respiratory infections and asthma as a result of severe air pollution in Delhi, Aditya founded “Plant a Million Trees”, an initiative that started with him planting a few saplings alone and sharing the photos on social media, and has now led to the planting of over 1,80,000 trees.

Aditya also successfully campaigned against single-use plastic by working with India’s “National Green Tribunal” to introduce environmental compensation from some of the largest organisations in India, including Amazon, Walmart-Flipkart and Pepsi.

As part of the campaign against single-use plastic, Aditya petitioned Burger King to stop using single-use plastics in their restaurants. As the movement peaked traction the day before the protest, the fast-food giant declared it would no longer use single-use plastics in Burger King restaurants across India.

Aditya has inspired countless young people to campaign on environmental and social issues through his work.

2. Akarsh Shroff | SPARK, Bengaluru

Aakarsh started SPARK (Socially Productive and Responsible Karnatakans) to utilise the power of social media to activate young people as “impact makers”. Through his micro-influencer marketing strategy, Akarsh and his co-founder have built a team of more than 300 volunteers and have managed to impact the lives of more than 450 children living in orphanages and other under-resourced settings.

SPARK now has several youth-led projects that focus on academic mentoring to orphans, language and communication skills and leadership development.

3. Aripina Jayalaxmi | Hyderabad

Coming from a slum community in Hyderabad, India, Aripina was the Prime Minister of the Hyderabad City Children’s Parliament for 2 years and mentors Hyderabad City Level Children’s Parliament.

In her tenure as the PM, Jayalakshmi played an essential role on many fronts, negotiating with the government for better roads, water supply, electricity, toilet facilities and relief measures during COVID for people in slums. What makes Jaya stand apart is her battles, both within her family and outside, to pursue her beliefs and ambition.

In September 2021 as Prime Minister Jayalakshmi successfully presented two representations to Divya Devarajan IAS, the Special Secretary of Government of Telangana’s Women Development and Child Welfare Department. The first was to establish anganwadis in 21 slums that were identified by Jayalakshmi and her members of the Cabinet. The second was to start a pilot project to provide breakfast to children in 56 slums.

4. Deepanjali Sahu | Save the Children India, Orrisa

Hailing from Gotma village, Odisha, from the beginning, she has been inclined towards social welfare activities. She takes interest in creating awareness on some very important issues, such as female feticide, Menstrual Health & Hygiene and Child Marriage and has organised multiple rallies to create awareness on these issues through her creative skills.

During the COVID pandemic, she went around her community to create awareness on COVID appropriate behaviours and was also actively involved in advocating girls’ safety issues in all villages under 9-panchayat jurisdiction.

For the past year, she has been actively working on climate action through tree plantations which she has taken up at the Panchayat and district level. In total 1,150 plants have been planted under her leadership and she has become an inspiration for her village.

5. Kavya Gupta | Bhavishya Foundation, Kanpur

With the experience of volunteering for a river cleaning drive, Kavya realised the need for environmental education to be more experiential and focussed on mindset, and not just on bookish concepts. He started Bhavishya Foundation that creates these learning journeys by continuously engaging young people in various activities like tree plantations.

With a team of 12 members and more than 50 volunteers, they have taught more than 2,000 children to date and planted nearly 3,000 saplings through plantation drives in Uttar Pradesh.

6. Manan Sharma | Girl Up Muskurahat, Amritsar

As a founder of Girl Up Muskurahat, Sharma is working towards women’s rights, healthcare awareness, fundraising, and advocacy. Under her Girl Up club, she has contributed positively towards menstrual equity. Under Girl Up India, she along with her team raised ₹73,692 to provide 379 reusable Sanitary kits to underprivileged girls.

They also contributed ₹28,000 to Youths Against Corona (community based in Delhi) to provide PPE kits to hospitals in need during the beginning of the pandemic. They also organised virtual workshops on domestic violence and mental health awareness. They hosted sessions for schools on topics of menstrual health and “good touch and bad touch”.

7. Naman Sonpar | Hari Koshish, Delhi

An 8th-grade student, Founder of Hari Koshish, and Co-founder of ClimateEdSchool, Naman Sonpar is determined to invest and contribute to making Earth a better place to live for all living beings. An environmentalist in making, his passion and love for the environment will surely see him make a huge positive difference in the years to come.

He was awarded the top 3 Changemakers of India Award (2019-2020) by the Times of India.

He has been closely following and working upon environment contributing issues and has been participating, volunteering and campaigning with PRATYeK, Save The Children, UNICEF, Mash Project and Let Me Breathe.

8. Namya Joshi | Sat Paul Mittal School, Ludhiana

Namya believes that technology can be used to benefit mankind, but it wasn’t until she started playing the computer-based game Minecraft she realised how tech can be a powerful tool for learning. She built and delivered her Minecraft-based lesson on Egyptian civilisation, instantly seeing how interested the children were.

She has now trained more than 1,000 teachers and students on how Minecraft can be used in education. She has been praised for her entrepreneurial spirit and ability to “step into other people’s shoes”, as with her motto #EachOneTeachTen she shares her message of gaming for good.

9. Priyaswara Bharti | Bihar Youth for Child Rights, Patna

Hailing from Bihar, Priyaswara witnessed social evils like child marriage, honour killing, dowry practice, domestic violence and female infanticide in her community.

Inspired to bring a change, she founded BYCR (Bihar Youth for Child Rights) with her core team of five members. BYCR creates awareness and advocates for child rights by conducting events via online and offline mediums. Since 2013, Priyaswara has been collaborating with UNICEF and other organisations and has activated 60+ child rights advocates in various communities.

10. Rishabh Singh | Anima Drive, Jalesar

Growing up in Uttar Pradesh, the problem of abandoning non-lactating cattle was a daily sight for Rishabh. He empathised with the problem and started Anima Drive to solve this issue. With a team of 20 student members and six rural women, Risabh is making it financially viable for farmers and Gaushalas to take care of non-lactating cattle. They do this by processing and creating products from the dung.

They’ve helped save more than 60 cattle from being abandoned. They have also started the Social Pathshala initiative to create a friendly atmosphere for the birds by collaborating with schools in Uttar Pradesh.

11. Rishikesh Amit Nayak | Kishan Know, Bhubhaneshwar

To deal with pests and microbial attacks, Kishan Know is a project through which Rishikesh created a low-cost, sustainable and farmer-friendly product that is very helpful in detecting unforeseeable crop damage. All types of farmers can use this cost-effective product easily as it requires no basic education or complex usage guidelines.

The device’s IoT technology and AI-based model help recognise microbial attacks in just 12 hours. It also detects exactly which area of the farm is affected along with the pesticide solution. This device ascertains the microbes and pests at the premature phase, curbing their growth and boosting crop production efficiently.

His other project “Sanjeewani” is low cost, customised, smart personal assistant to cater to the personal, social and intellectual needs of the disabled. This product is much more effective than the existing products in the market. It helps the users overcome the challenges posed by their physical disabilities and improve their lifestyles.

12. Saleha Khan | Save the Children India, Mumbai

From a small slum community in Mumbai, Saleha, just like many others, has had a difficult life. More so because she is a girl coming from marginalised surroundings. Despite her own suffering at a young age, she decided to make a change not just for herself but for all the girls out there suffering just like her.

Saleha has made it her passion and mission in life, starting at a very young age of 12, to break the taboo around menstruation. Her exceptional contribution in various community welfare activities got her the most prestigious award — Savitribai Phule Award. She was also selected as an Ashoka Youth Venturer and was mentored in leadership skills for 1 year.

13. Shailendra Singh | Save the Children India, Rajasthan

21-year-old Shailendra Singh’s soft nature makes it hard to believe that he is an active child rights crusader. The extremely mild-mannered boy, hailing from Bijalpura village in Rajasthan, is a young lad who has prevented five marriages in his village besides rescuing 33 children from child labourers.

Shailendra is well-versed with the admission process and keeps constant contact with the principal and teachers in every school in his area. He conducts awareness campaigns with Children Groups wherein he enumerates and lists down out-of-school children and helps in enrolling them back to school.

He has also raised his voice against corporal punishment in schools and has counselled several teachers on it.

14. Sia Godika | Sole Warriors, Bangalore

At the age of 13, Sia was deeply disturbed by the situation of some people in her neighbourhood who were living without any footwear. She noticed adults and children with bruised and swollen feet, construction labourers, families and street vendors all working barefoot in hazardous conditions.

Inspired by the statistic that 350 million pairs of footwear are discarded annually, she launched Sole Warriors, nonprofit collecting footwear from privileged communities and donating them to those in need. Over the past 18 months, they collected over 15,000 pairs from 4,000 households through a network of 50 volunteers and eight supporting organisations, with the ultimate aim to reach one million feet.

15. Siya Tayal | Bee Nifty, Haryana

Siya founded Bee Nifty as an approach to make a change that sweeps the globe by basic, achievable deeds. Bee Nifty is a nonprofit organisation, where under the “My Own Bag” initiative, they provide income and livelihood to women in rural Haryana. They employ them to stitch bags, made from recyclable, new waste fabrics that would otherwise be dumped or burned.

They also started Santa Cause as an event to bring joy and basic necessities to underprivileged Basti children who can’t celebrate festivals and holidays.

Her current initiative is “Project I Am Enough”, which aims at forming a community of youth, aiming to make this world a better place and implement self-love, all united against body shaming. The community-based initiative has a long-term vision in mind to bring like-minded voices against body shaming together and create a safe haven for discussion.

The aim is to normalise bodies, spread awareness about body shaming and eating disorders in a creative, inclusive manner.