“Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. Tiptoe if you must, but take a step.” Naeem Callaway
We all know Greta Thunberg for inspiring the international movement to fight climate change. However, she started small, spending her school days outside the Swedish Parliament to call for an action on climate change by holding up a sign reading “School strike for climate.”
In my case, it was a simple breakout room activity during our career guidance classes that got me thinking about initiating a project that would be beneficial to society. My imagination ran wild from thinking about building an animal shelter to donating prosthetics to amputees and initiating an awareness drive on environmental degradation. But eventually, “The Life Project”, a fundraising project initiated by Anika, Aryan, Zoeya and myself, was driven by our passion to help organisations suffering from the impacts of COVID-19 and the lockdown.
On our hunt for organisations to support, we came across a farm called Prani – The Pet Sanctuary. As a result of COVID-19, the number of visitors at the farm had decreased drastically, burdening them financially. 700+ animal lives were at stake and this realisation was a determining factor to help prani. We created a website to educate people about Prani while spreading awareness on topics like animal welfare. While we used typical methods of raising funds like opening up a donation page, we also hosted a unique virtual pet show. Along with the registration fees for the event and donations we collected a total of 1.22 lakh rupees to support Prani.
Challenges are a part and parcel of every journey we take, but being defeated is up to us. No matter what, never give up. We were 5 days away from the virtual pet show but had just 5 participants. It was heartbreaking that the registrations were moving so slowly for the endless hours of effort we had put into planning the event. At this point we didn’t know what more we could do and that’s when we decided to approach the events team for guidance. They gave us a bunch of suggestions and ideas including visiting every primary class and encouraging them to join the event. We implemented the suggestions and the results were amazing as the number of participants increased to 175. This was just one of the many challenges we faced, but trust me every challenge has its own solution.
Similarly, I believe everyone has the potential to make a big change but they all need to start with small steps as simple as planting a tree weekly or feeding the poor. I would like to thank Anjana maam, Sameer sir, the events team for their guidance and of course the legacy community for their support and donations towards our cause.
So what are you waiting for? Grab your opportunity to initiate your own project without hesitation and make a difference! I will be happy to support you and share my journey and the challenges I faced.
About the author:
Hi! I am Ansh, a Grade 10 Cambridge learner. I love gymnastics, basketball, swimming, coding, science and definitely blogging. Experimenting, inventing, learning and discovering are elements of my day to day life that fuel my curiosity and keep me occupied. I strongly believe in experience based learning and that’s what gave me the idea to blog about “The Life Project”. Dive straight into my second blog and keep a watch out for more interesting blogs from me!