The need to co-lead

On July 13th, 2017, I was invited to be on a call with Bill along with 6 more Ashoka Youth Venturers (as we were back then). I was ecstatic and honored to have some face to face time with a legend.

As we spoke, Bill shared with us one of his newest initiatives “Lead Young” where he was creating a mini online library of stories of change leaders who were successful with whatever they did because their first endevours in changemaking were during their teenage years. He additionally wanted to start sharing stories of youth, like us to inspire more!

Bill created an enticing environment that implored all of us to think of ways in which we can share these stories and inspire more youth in a unique manner such that it sticks and grows.

An idea I had was to share it at schools because that’s where we can find maximum youth. But, in that one hour call, I obviously didn’t have the best way to do this chalked out just yet.

I was so intrigued by all the conversations and so empowered to share this power of changemaking, I couldn’t stop thinking of the idea I had. It took a lot of figuring out what could be the best possible way to have the max impact in the shortest amount of time to deliver and positively change.

I came up with the idea of sharing these during assemblies, which are very popular and compulsory to attend in India. During these assemblies, students are often burdened with themes which can be overwhelming, so I though maybe if in the last 5 mins, we had the opportunity to share the story of one young person who just like our listeners saw problems around them and though of solutions but the only difference was that the kid from the story had gone out there and made the change.

I went to my school first and pitched the idea and was lucky that they were super excited to start this. The first story shared was of our very own Ara(a Ashoka Young Changmaker) and it was a hit! Moving forward, they started enacting the lives and journeys of changemakers and discussed them post, to make it more interactive using the lead young toolkit I developed with Ashoka.

I went on and shared this with more and more schools and teachers across the city, trying my best to convince all of them to incorporate this. Eventually after visiting several schools managed to get almost 20 of them involved! Also, taking help of a program I created called the “Lead Young Student Ambassador” program, connected with one young person from the institute to help establish Lead Young there.

To grow this more, and with a different approach and larger impact, I approached a magazine focused on school students, their parents and teachers called “School LIVE”. We began publishing one Lead Young story in each issue and with their help have now been able to reach over 800 schools and 2.5 million students! The stories followed a unique structure created to inspire youth to take action and become changemakers.

What started out as a simple idea in that short call has now become a movement inspiring millions of young people.

Change is the only constant but now the world is in a constant need of Changemakers.

Times like these make me realize even more how important it is for every single person to develop a changemaker mindset and skill set to be able to survive, revive and thrive, especially youth. And for those of us who are already practicing this in some form or the other, having obtained this power and belief that we can make a difference, it is even more imperative that we share this with more and more young people.

The story above is a very short candid anecdote of my first ever conversation with the awe-inspiring Bill Drayton back in 2017. A phenomenal conversation that inspired me to build the Lead Young at Schools movement which has up until today reached 800+ schools and about 2.5 million students across the country.

Now involving more motivating Young Changemakers to build and grow this movement, we are taking this concept to parts of America and South Africa and hopefully across the globe soon. The simplest of the ideas can inspire the most powerful change and this experience is a testimony of that. Every idea matters, and that is how we are going to achieve a world where “Everyone is a Changemaker”.

As we get through these trying times, I love to use this as a reminder to allow our crazy ideas, to make a difference and help the world, to flow freely and become a reality!