From being one of the smartest in the world to fighting air pollution, top social stories this week
This week, we have a lineup of stories that will motivate you to prove yourself and encourage you to take initiatives to save our earth.
Age does not matter if you want to change something. Whether you are an 11-year-old individual or a 60-year-old individual, you just need to follow your guts and passion to motivate others.
This week SocialStory brings you stories about how some young girls, as well as organisations, are inspiring us to give it back to society and the environment.
From helping reduce the learning gap in schools to solving the problems of air pollution and waste management, this week we present to you some inspiring stories.
This 11-year-old Indian girl is one of the smartest in the world
Anushka, an 11-year-old student is now among the top one percent of people in the world when it comes to intelligence. She, who took her Mensa IQ test at the University of East London on April 20, memorised the entire periodic table in just 40 minutes, and got a score of 162, two points more than physicist Stephen Hawking’s score.
Neither Hawking nor Einstein is believed to have taken the test, but their IQs are estimated to be 160.
These two 17-year-old girls are fighting Delhi's air pollution
Ketaki Tyagi and Shruti Sood, 17-year-old students of Class 12, have decided to combat air pollution in the region by starting a crowdfunding campaign called ‘Happy Seeder, Happy Lungs’.
The two Delhi-based girls have managed to raise over Rs 3.5 lakh in three months in 2018 through this initiative. They used the money to buy machines that can convert stubble into fertiliser, and distributed them to farmers in Jhajjar, Haryana.
Apart from providing an eco-friendly solution to eliminate crop residue, the two students also conducted awareness sessions and educated farmers about the harmful effects of stubble burning.
This NGO helps underprivileged children unleash their potential
Joy Srinivasan started Makkala Jagriti in 2003 to reduce the learning gap at the school level. This Bengaluru-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) initially started by sponsoring school education for children from marginalised backgrounds in and around Adugodi in Bengaluru.
But today, they are enabling thousands of children to learn better by introducing holistic development models in government schools and the surrounding communities.
Makkala Jagriti has been facilitating learning as well as the development of children for the last 15 years, and has touched the lives of thousands of children since then.
This Mumbai startup is turning plastic into wearable fabric
Mumbai-based health food and beverage startup Raw Pressery is doing its bit to negate the harmful effects of plastic. The startup, which was founded in 2013 to offer healthy cold-pressed juices, realised the harmful effects of plastics, has started an eco-friendly initiative called RawCycle.
For this, the startup collected 1.2 million bottles from customers and recycled it into clothing, and has launched a collection of 1,500 t-shirts in the market this year. Launched under a collection called Street to Studio, the t-shirts are made of 95 percent recycled plastic polyester and five percent spandex.
This 12-year-old from Kochi runs a library that does not charge membership or late fees
Yashoda Shenoy, a Class VII student of TD High School runs a free library from her own home where you can find over 3,500 books in English, Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil, Sanskrit, and Konkani. She does not charge any membership fee, but she does request that the books be returned on time.
Based in Kochi, the library now has around 110 members, and Yashoda also requests if each of them could donate books from their personal collection, whenever possible.
(Edited by Rekha Balakrishnan)