Two teams comprising of 6 first-year students each of Parikrma Junior College participated in the Inventure Changemaker Challenge 2018, conducted by Inventure Academy, to recognize and provide funding to the best teams of young people who come up with sustainable ideas to make noticeable changes in the society.
It started with entering online applications with 48 other teams, followed by getting selected in the top 20 who had to physically present their project to a panel of judges at Inventure.
The two teams from Parikrma are called ‘Voices of Light’s and ‘Retaining the innocence’, which are working towards recording affordable audio content for the blind and creating awareness about child sexual abuse amongst the underprivileged, respectively.
Both teams pitched their ideas to the judges and spoke of their plans about their pilot projects. Impressed with their plans, the teams received a check of 5000 INR from the judges that same day. Team ‘Retaining the innocence’ got praised as being the best presentation the judges had seen that day.
One week later, the announcements for the top 10 teams were made and both the Parikrma teams made the list! Then the teams started working on their projects. ‘Voices of Light’ visited the recording studio to record two lessons from a 7th-grade textbook, whereas team ‘Retaining the Innocence’ held life skill workshops with almost 10 government schools spread across Bangalore. The girls spoke to the middle school students about Good Touch and Bad touch, how to recognize abuse being done to them and others, and ways of preventing it. In fact, the boys of second years also joined them in some of these sessions, because it was important to send across a message that even the senior boys care about issues such as these.
Despite facing several issues such as rejection from several government schools, indifference from other students, missing numerous classes, and non-cooperative parents of the students they were trying to reach out to, these young girls held their stance and continued with their work.
The final presentations and pitches were made to the judges on December 3, following which, only three teams made it to the top. Team ‘Retaining the Innocence’ from Parikrma Junior college was one amongst the list, who received a check of INR 60,000 under the category of ‘Team with maximum sustainable impact’. Team ‘Voice of Light’ received INR 40,000 for making it to the top 10 and to carry their project forward.
The teams will now use the money to fund their projects further. There are plans of conducting walkathons involving several schools, holding more workshops and eventually start addressing the victims of child abuse directly, and holding individual sessions with them. The Voices of Light team will release their audio lessons soon, and we just hope it all creates the impactful change it was all meant for!
We congratulate both the teams and the mentors for all their efforts and wish them the best!