Nidhi Gautam: The Delhi University student who became British High Commissioner for a day

se people to the experiences of children with special needs so that they understand and see things from a lens of empathy and understanding," says Jeya.

A Tinker Champ in the making

Born in Delhi, Jeya moved to Bengaluru at the age of five. An introvert with not many friends, she spent most of her time surrounded by books. "Nothing like a good read. I have always found myself drawn to the world of books," says the teen whose favourite author is Sudha Murty. But it was in Grade 7 that she first discovered Atal Innovation Mission. "It began with a message that landed on my WhatsApp school group about a Tinkerpreneur encouraging students to teach their peers about entrepreneurship. This got me intrigued," says Jeya, who began exploring the field and soon prepared a masterclass on digital skills. "Teaching students about basic PowerPoint or Excel was the beginning of my journey as a Tinker Champ." Now a Class 10 student, she create resources like boot camps, YouTube lives, and workshops to teach students from Class 6 to 12 on digital skills, innovation, entrepreneurship, and business through peer mentoring. Till now, they have impacted over 5000 students.

Supporting children with intellectual disabilities

Over the years as a Tinker Champ, she noticed a gap: the lack of attention to intellectually challenged children. "Instead of just focussing on the resources for the intellectually challenged children, the bigger problem is the stigma around them." It's something that she witnessed firsthand in her apartment. "Such children are often mocked and made fun of. From the bird's eye view, the bigger issue is the stigma and not the resources they lack," she adds. This motivated her to start Khwahish with a mission to support children with intellectual disabilities by addressing the societal stigma and providing them with necessary resources.

"I found lack of education to be the root cause as many people have no idea about intellectual disabilities, which often leads to insensitivity," explains Jeya. She began by creating a website to share her mission and vision, and started reaching out to specialists in the field. That's when she found Dr Anamika Hui, an audiologist and speech-language pathologist who works with children with intellectual disabilities, and confirmed that stigma is a huge issue. Meanwhile, Dr Anamika also cautioned her that it's a close-knit community that isn't open to the idea of collaboration. "She told me even if I intend to empower them, I will face some resistance. I took her advice seriously and started connecting with more special educators and special schools in Bengaluru to build trust," informs Jeya.

SDG 10

While interacting with one such school - Buddhi Special School - the teenager had an epiphany that to shift the perceptions of children with intellectual disabilities from sympathy to empowerment, she needed to display their talents well and "make people know what they have to offer". Inspired, she conducted an art activity and collected their artworks for a virtual reality art exhibition. "Seeing people's surprise at the children's talent was eye-opening and confirmed that there was genuine interest, which led me to conduct my first awareness session with the help of Dr Anamika." By showcasing the talents of children with intellectual disabilities, Jeya aims to create an inclusive world. "My focus is on SDG 10 - reducing inequalities by creating an inclusive world, which can be achieved by sensitising people and changing their view on other people, who might be a little different from them."

Soon interest grew, and she began organising more awareness campaigns in residential areas as well as schools. Through Khwahish, she wants to support special schools and children and work on providing accessible learning resources and guides for parents and guardians. In just a few months, she has already impacted over 120 students. "I often ask children to picture a child with an intellectual disability, and they usually imagine someone helpless or vulnerable. This is the perception I want to change," she emphasises.

A long journey

Her journey hasn't been easy as the 15-year-old had to face a lot of criticism initially with many doubting her qualifications to work with or raise awareness about children with special needs. "I was told that working with specially-abled children or even spreading awareness about them required a certification. And I had no authority to speak on them. But I stood my ground and told them that one needed passion and the drive to conduct awareness campaigns more than certifications." Many adults dismissed her effort as a mere project due to her age and she even found many students indifferent to the cause. "Since special schools and regular schools are different, not many meet children with special needs daily. Hence, it's hard for them to understand them or know how to behave or react." She often uses the example of braces to make children understand the concept. "I tell them that if they had never seen braces before, they might mock a friend wearing them. But it’s just something normal. The same logic applies to children with special needs. However, changing perceptions takes time," adds Jeya, who believes early intervention is crucial as young minds are easy to influence as they are still far away from rigid beliefs.

Despite the challenges, Jeya has found support from a few people who have become her collaborators. "They believed in me and the cause and were always ready to help," she says. However, she acknowledges that changing perceptions is a long journey. A crucial moment in her mission was her visit to Buddhi Special School in Bengaluru, where an interaction with the coordinator, Mrs Rekha, deeply impacted her. "She told me that these kids have no idea how much stigma they will face the moment they step out into the real world. Most kids are mocked and bullied. Some kids, who need special care, are separated from their parents and stay in the premises all the time since their parents don't have the training or the skillset to take care of them. That's why special schools become important." Realising the challenges that these children might face in the real world, Jeya wants to step in and pull the plug on this by creating as much awareness so that these kids feel equally safe in the outside world. "I want the awareness impact to go into thousands for neurotypical people, especially children so that the world becomes more inclusive."

Jeya, who calls herself a bibliophile, calls awareness a two-way learning process. "When you are spreading awareness, you are in turn learning a lot in the process," says the teenager. She began Khwahish with a passion for working for children with intellectual disabilities and is on a mission to make a more inclusive world. "It's important to go with the flow, and have a growth mindset where you do not quit."

says Arushi, in an interview with Global Indian. Academically, she had long since surpassed her school work, and wanted to spend her time taking deep dives into the subjects she loved most – math, coding and astronomy. Her parents – her father is an environmentalist and her mother a writer – supported their daughter fully and when Arushi was six, her dad drove her to her first ever hackathon.

[caption id="attachment_34734" align="aligncenter" width="485"] Arushi Nath, winner of the Best Project award at the Canada-Wide Science Fair 2023[/caption]

The hackathon veteran

This was 2014 and Arushi was the youngest competitor there, by far. NASA's Curiosity rover had just landed on Mars and Arushi was "so fascinated by the idea of being able to land and control something on a whole other planet," she smiles. So, at the hackathon, she and her team made a little robot that could identify obstacles and avoid them. Very complex work for a six-year-old - "We created the physical structure, then coded it," Arushi explains. The robot's ultrasonic sensor could detect obstacles and avoid them. And all this was possible because Arushi had already familiarised herself with Arduino - an open-source electronic prototyping platform that allows users to create interactive electronic objects.

As far as Arushi was concerned, doing projects was the best way to learn. She also wanted to bring her scientific acumen together with the things she cared about. So, in 2018, when she and her friends attended the School Strike for Climate started by Swedish Climate activist Greta Thunberg, Arushi wanted to do more “than raise slogans or wait for others to act,” she said.

S.N.A.C.K.

This led to her designing ‘Schools and NASA Aiding Climate Action by Kids’, which  comes with the catchy abbreviation, ‘S.N.A.C.K.’. The project uses satellite imagery to calculate tree densities of schools in Toronto, than ranks and maps them. She also designed a pollution sensor to measure levels in parks and schools across the city, using Arduino, the open source electronics platform that lets users create interactive models. “I wanted school children to come up with local solutions to global challenges,” she says.

Her efforts resulted in her being named the NASA SpaceApps Global Nominee – she had already won the Space Apps Challenge in 2014 and again in 2018. In fact, by the age of 10, she had been at a jaw-dropping 29 hackathons. This was a special win, though, she says, of S.N.A.C.K, as it was her first solo attempt. ” I had to do all the work myself, from thinking of the idea, making it, coding and presenting it to the judges in 40 hours.”

The dragonfly drone

As far as Arushi was concerned, doing projects was the best way to learn. During the Covid-19, she began work on her first major endeavour – building a drone – quite a feat for the young scientist, who was only 10 years old at the time. The idea for the directional dragonfly drone was born during the COVID-19 lockdown. Disturbed by the news of locusts devastating crops in Asia and Africa, Arushi saw an opportunity to make a difference. "These locusts often travel in large swarms, are very fast, and can change direction unpredictably," the Global Indian explained, underlining the urgency of the problem.

Arushi's solution was to use drones for locust control, "as they can fly, follow the locusts, and monitor their behavior," she explains. She also wanted to biomimic nature, choosing the dragonfly because it is by far the most efficient hunter, with a 95 percent success rate in catching prey (in comparison, the success rate of lions is 25 percent and sharks have a 50 percent chance of success). "I made a protoype using a soda can, a motor and a distance sensor I created on Arduino," Arushi says. When she returned from the Ellehacks hackathon, she refined her model, using lego pieces to create a drone "I programmed it to identify all red objects as locusts," she said, describing the functionality of her creation.

The planetary defense system

Given her involvement with the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, her prowess with Python and her love for Maths, Arushi was casting around for a way to bring all her passions together. That's how she the idea for planetary defense against unknown asteroids was born. She had learned about robotic telescopes through the RASC and utilised images from these devices – “I took images from robotic telescopes in Canada, Spain, the US, and Australia to get full sky coverage," Arushi explains. She had to sift through these to pinpoint the unknown asteroids, using the Gaia Star Catalogue for information on star positions, and the NASA Horizon dataset, for predictions on the locations of known asteroids. Then, using her coding and math skills, she developed an algorithm to filter out known entities - “I created custom masks to remove all these objects, leaving me with the unknown objects," she explains.

She couldn’t always go it alone, though, often turning to online forums for help. "When I got some errors, I would try for days, even weeks, on my own to find the answer, but if not, I would reach out to specific forums," she says. She also reached out to experts, including Christina Thomas, the lead investigator on NASA’s DART mission. “"I sent her a message, told her about my current project, and asked if I could have a Zoom meeting to talk to her about her project and how it could relate to mine," Arushi smiles. Thomas responded and the two did get on that Zoom meeting. "I actually asked her for pointers on my project and what I could do," she adds.

Finding acclaim

[caption id="attachment_34735" align="aligncenter" width="594"] Arushi receiving her award at the Canada-Wide Science Fair 2023[/caption]

“The whole thing took about ten months to complete,” Arushi says, Her goals changed along the way, so much so that her first goal and the end result were very different.” Finally, her findings were sent to the Minor Planet Center database. Then came waiting for a response. “A couple of weeks later, I got an email and three of the asteroids had my name next to them,” Arushi smiles. She submitted her project to the Toronto Science Fair and won gold, qualifying for the prestigious Canada-Wide Science Fair, where she also went on to win. “I was watching the results with my family and wasn’t expecting my name to pop up again but it did,” she says.

Now, Arushi is continuing work on her planetary defense project. Now that the DART Mission has successfully entered the Didymos (asteroid) system, she wants to measure the changes of the system during this impact. "I began studying the Didymos binary system for a copule of months before the DART impact," she says, "To fully understand how it has been affected."

• Follow Arushi Nath on LinkedIn