BENGALURU: A little effort and a big heart can go a long way in making lives better for the poor. Nikhiya Shamsher, all of 14, has shown that.
A Class 9 student of Greenwood International school, Nikhiya has been lending a helping hand to thousands of underprivileged children in Bengaluru through her social initiative ‘Bags, Books and Blessings’. She collects re-usable books, old bags, shoes and stationery items that are in good condition and distributes them among orphans and less privileged children. She hopes this way children don’t lose out on their education due to lack of basic necessities,
And how did the idea come up? “I wanted to donate my school bag rather than discard it so I gave it to my housekeeper’s daughter. The next day, she wrote me a letter thanking me for the bag and telling me how it encouraged her to go to school every day. She said she’d never had a school bag before. This got me thinking. I realised that I could help many more children and came up with the idea of Bags, Books and Blessings in 2014,” says Nikhiya.
First steps weren’t easy
The 14-year-old recalls that it was not easy initially to collect things. Also, some people were sceptical about the idea.
To start with, Nikhiya along with her friends started a donation drive in school. Over the past two years, they collected over 5,000 books, 800 bags, 600 uniforms and 1,200 shoes. She also actively campaigned on social media to create awareness about the activity, which not only helped her collect huge quantity of re-useable school supplies but also helped her gather funds. Later, the collected items were distributed to 4,200 poor students in various orphanages, schools and Parikrma Foundation, which provides free education to 1,700 students from four orphanages and neighbouring slums. The funds are usually given to schools at the end of every academic year, says Nikhiya.
For this young philanthropist, her willingness to help students pursue their dreams just doesn’t stop here. In June 2015, she came up with another initiative called ‘Yearn to Learn’, where she along with a few volunteers set up physics, chemistry and biology laboratories in schools that don’t have them.
“I was talking to the principal of Parikrma, and found that many students fare badly in their Boards, simply because they do not have the lab equipment to practise for their practical exams. Also, their low marks and the lack of practical approach in their lives discouraged them from going to college and most of them drop out to work menial, low wage jobs even after having completed schooling. So I decided to help them by setting up laboratories,” says Nikhiya.
She held talks with the school staff and finalised on the type of equipment required in laboratories. Later she began to raise funds through a crowd funding campaign on ketto.org to set them up. “The fact that these labs need to be replenished every few months is a sign that the students are utilising them to the fullest,” says Nikhiya, who has set up 11 labs in three schools.
Nikhiya realised that to set up more labs and sustain them, she needed to constantly generate funds. Thus her own e-commerce website, www.knicnacs.com, was launched this January. The sole purpose of this website is to raise funds to sustain activities of her initiatives. "Just last month we sponsored the entire education of 25 visually impaired children,” says Nikhiya, a topper in class.
Nikhiya's parents say she has struck the right balance between studies and social work, preferring to do all school work in school itself and social work activities from home.