Former US President Barack Obama is in India for the first time since leaving office. Obama will address a live Town hall on 1 December, where he will interact with the country’s young leaders who are making a difference in their communities.
Almost 8,000 people applied for an invitation to the event, out of which estimated 280 will get to meet the former US president. The young leaders will talk about what it means to be an active citizen and to make an impact.
1. Trisha Shetty – Entrepreneur
Trisha Shetty is the founder of SheSays, the NGO that began the ‘Lahu ka Lagaan’ campaign against a high ‘luxury’ GST on sanitary pads.
Her NGO aims to end gender discrimination and further women’s rights in the country, while educating men towards helping end gender violence. Shetty was one of the first few people to be announced as a participant at the event, last month in Chicago. She’s even got celebrities like Mark Ruffalo endorsing the incredible work she does.
Shetty was a part of the prestigious UN Young Leaders for Sustainable Developmental Goals.
2. Akkai Padmashali – Transgender Rights Activist
Trans woman and a gender rights activist, Akkai Padmashali is expected to talk about the discrimination and oppression faced by the transgender community in India.
She’s spoken about how it took Padmashali years to get acceptance from her family and her brother was the first one to reach out to her.
Padmashali became the first transgender woman to get a driving license with an “F”, acknowledging her gender. She has also been instrumental in the framing of the Transgender Policy for Karnataka, which was approved by the state government in October 2017.
3. Gurmehar Kaur – Free-Speech Activist
This 22-year-old from Jalandhar, Punjab has already become a free-speech activist to be reckoned with. A literature student at Delhi’s Lady Shri Ram College, she’s gearing up to release her first book, Small Acts of Freedom.
While she has been trolled and abused for advocating peace and not war between India and Pakistan, she is not backing down anytime soon. Many in the government have also attacked her for taking a stand on free speech and in student politics.
She’s gotten support from Rahul Gandhi and celebrities like Anurag Kashyap and Vidya Balan.
Kaur helped co-found Citizens for Public Leadership (CPL), an initiative to involve youth involved with public policy.
4. Sanchana Krishnan — Storyteller
When 24-year-old Sanchana Krishnan found out that she had been battling bipolar disorder for a large chunk of her life, she created her project “Living Stories” which aims to create a safe, non-preachy space to discuss mental health.
The project initiated one-on-one conversations between people, where one person would act as a human book and the other as a reader.
5. Virali Modi – Disability Rights Activist
Virali Modi is a disability rights activist who spent a lot of her formative years in United States. Modi had come to India in 2006, when she contracted malaria which left her in a coma. She survived but was left paralysed in her legs.
Modi has been an ardent campaigner for accessibility on public transport, after she was assaulted by a man on the pretext of helping her onto a train carriage. Apart from activism, she has also been a runner-up in India’s Miss Wheelchair pageant.
6. Aanchal Malhotra – Author
India’s partition was a difficult and traumatic time for lakhs of people who shifted their homes in just about a few hours’ notice, and Aanchal Malhotra tried to bring closure to the families that suffered.
Through her project “Museum of Material Memory”, Malhotra spoke to hundreds of people and asked them what they brought with them or what they found at the homes they settled into. The result was a beautiful archive of the most prized possessions of families right from name plates to jewellery, photographs, religious books, and utensils.
Malhotra also combined all the stories into a book, Remnants of a Separation, as a catalog.
7. Sairee Chahal – Entrepreneur
Noida-based entrepreneur Sairee Chahal had a simple idea — to enable women who had taken breaks find jobs again. With that, SHEROES was born in 2014, a woman’s only job search portal that offers a mix of full time and flexible work options, entrepreneurial work options, internships, and projects.
Chahal’s platform also provides career support programmes and mentorship to women. SHEROES has over 7,000 companies listed on it and offers services in all major cities.
The entrepreneur has a business degree from IMT, Ghaziabad and an MPhil from JNU.
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