While it would be easy to label Lakshya Subodh as an over-achiever, it would be merely just another label among the many others he already has: TEDx Speaker, Karnataka State Football team Goalkeeper 2017, UN associate, the youngest speaker at age 14 at the World Bank annual meeting in 2018, social worker, and youth activist. Not bad for the now 16-year-old.
“My interest in social causes and advocacy for change began in Class 7, when I read about the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UNSD), which the organisation hopes the world will complete by 2030. While the UNSD goals are common knowledge in the West, we have not been taught about them in school,” says Subodh, who believes that achieving the 17 global goals designated by the UN will “truly create a better world.” That was when he began to reach out to friends, classmates, teachers, and anyone who would listen and figure out how to make a difference.
The Delhi Public School student’s enthusiasm proved infectious, as his principal allowed him to set up ideation workshops in few of the DPSs in the city. “In the last three years, I got involved in several projects and in 2019, my social initiative, Igniting Dreams, was selected as one of the top three youth-led initiatives from India, following which I presented the same at the Activate Impact summit held at the UN headquarters in New York,” recalls Subodh, who also managed to take out time for his academics (“I keep my grades up”) and sports (“I have played at state and national levels of under-16 football”).
And then came 2020 with the pandemic. “I have been fortunate to have learned from and work with lots of experts in various development fields, Teach For India fellows, and members of Youth India Foundation. And as we saw the mass exodus of migrant labourers, I came to realise that rural India will become the global hotpot of infections,” elaborates Subodh.
The youth (singular) quickly got to work, rallying other youth (plural) to his side as he quickly sketched and storyboarded the first of a series of animated shorts to create a ‘COVID curriculum’ for increasing awareness and making women in Indian villages into self-reliant ‘Rural COVID Warriors’ (also the name of the initiative).
“The women are the centre of the household, and they need to be aware of the precautions, as well as not fall for the fake news and quack cures. We concentrate on teaching them to identify misinformation, which is often more harmful than helpful.”
Subodh began the pilot project in parts of East Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka, with help from members of ASHA, empowering 250 women in local hotspots, who took the awareness forward. Given the success of the initial pilot, the program is now running all over rural parts of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, and is launching in Uttarakhand next week, starting with the Pauri Garhwal, and Delhi the week after.
“Everywhere, student volunteers have helped us, as well as members of Teach for India, Youth Foundation, and so many other organisations. In Delhi, I have been fortunate to tie up with the DPS schools and we will start with the Shahdra and Karawal Nagar hotspots, where the cases are rising.”
In a nutshell
Lakshya Subodh has sketched and storyboarded the first of a series of animated shorts to create a ‘COVID curriculum’ with like-minded youth to help him. Together, they are spreading awareness and making rural women into self-reliant ‘Rural COVID Warriors’ (also the initiative’s name).