When Indian Children take the Centre Stage…

On 5^th December 2015, passionate leaders, community motivators, innovators and artists will come together in Mumbai’s National Centre for Performing Arts for the world famous TED Talks. TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, is a non-profit organization dedicated to ideas worth spreading. Every year, thousands of people attend these conferences in person and millions watch them online on YouTube.
More than 15 speakers will enthrall an audience of over 1000 people in Mumbai on Saturday the 5^th of December. Of these speakers, one is ten-year-old Ishita Kaytal from Pune. This blog continues Desh Apnayen’s celebration of the spirit of Indian children by talking about kids who have taken centre stage at different TED events and gifted us all with a new perspective.
Ishita Katyal, the youngest Indian TEDx speaker ever, will talk to us about ‘why you don’t have to wait till you grow up’ to be who you want to be. She has impressed many an audience in TED events held in New York, Pune and Bhilwara already. To watch a video of her speech, click here.
Last year, 15-year-old Trisha Prabhu opened our eyes to the problem of cyber bullying of young children. While schools, colleges, and other educational institutions have taken active steps to contain bullying on campus and have at times taken the strictest of measures, when it comes to bullying online, we are still caught unaware and think of this as a phenomenon that only plagues the western countries. How wrong we are. According to popular website Kids Stop Press, “her product ReThink aims to stop cyber bullying at the source even before damage has been done. This software sends an alert to a teenager about to post an offensive post on social media and asks them to rethink what they just wrote. Research has shown that teens changed their mind 93% of the time and deleted what they had just written.” To watch a video of her talk, click here.
No less inspiring is Angad Daryani, a 16 year old student, maker, researcher, artist, social entrepreneur, public speaker, environmentalist and philanthropist. His passion is to solve real world problems through technology and his 2013 TED talk was all about never ceasing to learn. He is the creator of the Virtual Brailler, a low-cost e book reader for the blind. Visit Angad’s website here.
TEDx has seen the likes of Hemani Kalucha, a 16 year old Robotics expert, Arsh Shah Dilbagi, a 16 year old who won a spot as one of Google’s 15 Global Science Fair finalists for his project about helping people with developmental disabilities like locked-in syndrome, Parkinson’s, or ALS communicate using only their breath and many more young Indians who are leading the way for change.
Desh Apnayen’s interaction with schools is exactly the material to take this spirit forward. We work with schools and children to show initiative, have ownership and create lasting solutions for our country’s problems by being active, engaging and responsible citizens. We can’t wait for the day when a Desh Apnayen child takes the centre stage at a TED event.