Provide water purifiers to needy school children.

Dear All,

This is Ishat Gangatkar. I’m an IB student currently enrolled in DP1 at Stonehill International school. Bangalore, India

I was born and raised in New York, USA and moved to India in 2019 to start my middle school in India.

The onset of the COVID pandemic in 2020 changed my perspective towards life and was also witness to innumerable difficulties faced by many of us during this period. I can still vividly remember coming back to my grand parents home from my boarding house at school as the lockdown took effect in March 2020.

My parents were in the US with my sister at that time and the circumstances bought about by the pandemic ensured that we could not meet each other for another year.

After I saw all the suffering and heard of the loss of so many lives during COVID both in the US and India . I was very disturbed and had then envisioned the need to contribute to my community.

It was a casual talk with my grandmother during this phase where she told me about many underprivileged kids not having access to clean drinking water even at some government funded schools in India and it was something I was unaware of at that time and was moved by this plight faced by these school children.

That’s when I started to work on a project to provide clean drinking water to underprivileged kids at government run schools in rural Bangalore and even outskirts within the state of Karnataka .My project is called “Shuddh Pani” meaning Clean water.

I again moved back to NY in 2021 when we had remote schooling for about 7 months and was wondering about the possible options to fund this project as I did not have the financial resources.

My mom is a commission artist in New York and as sold many of her art works in NY & many other states in the US . I offered to help her with her artwork by varnishing to wrapping and packing it.Every piece of art she sold, she would pay me a certain amount of money for all my efforts.

I started saving my earnings and when later asked by my grand parents & parents what would I want for my upcoming 13th birthday - I requested them to help fund my “Shuddh Pani” clean drinking water project.

I moved back to Bangalore at the end of 2021 to resume my on campus schooling.

During weekends I worked for few hours at our family run business as we faced a staff crunch due to COVID crisis. I was paid for the little things I would do in the factory and had saved a considerable amount of money in which I could afford to install water filters at two government schools until now.

My aim is to provide water filters to underprivileged children studying in schools and orphanages which are unable to provide clean drinking water.

If you consider this to be a good cause .

It would be my humble request for you to help fund my project towards the growth of my idea in any small way possible.

Thanks