Oakridgers Attend a Session Chaired by Mr. Ratan Tata

 On 29th November 2013, 20 students from Oakridge International School, between grades 8-11 attended the launch of the Indian Impact, an initiative by the Wharton Business School Alumni at a city hotel, Trident.

Our country has 42% of its child population malnourished. That is nearly half of our future leaders. Clearly, malnutrition is a pressing issue that unfortunately no one has attended to till now.

The Indian Impact basically aims at spreading awareness and providing an easy way to help. It is a website where you do your bit in combating malnutrition by either of the following ways:

1. You can adopt an Anganwadi Center. Anganwadis are the main tools that the government uses to combat malnutrition and lack of education. The website helps you locate the nearest centre and gives you a list of essentials that you can provide to the Anganwadi. 

2. You can support an NGO project. These projects are instrumental in reducing malnutrition, especially in high risk areas. Indian Impact basically aims at magnifying already existing NGO projects.

The Indian Impact is also officially tied to the Akshaya Patra and the Government of India to make this endeavour as successful as possible. The Indian Impact is all about easy involvement, instant impact and significant outreach, mainly in four states: Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra to unlock India's potential. 

After Ridhima Parvataneni introduced this idea to us, we had an interactive question-answer session with the honourable, Mr Ratan Tata and Mr GM Rao.

Ms Parvataneni asked them various questions, which led to inspiring answers before students and the media got their turn. 

Mr Tata and Mr Rao believe that malnutrition is a real emergency that has been ignored for years. Because of this, children have been neglected; our future has been neglected. They say that the media never caught this problem, but hopefully after this, malnutrition will have a larger spotlight.

They also believe that corporates can do their bit by visiting malnourished villages and providing infrastructural and educational support. Corporates should work with the government, not duplicate their efforts. 

And finally, they had some extremely valuable advice for the students: Be responsible, create awareness, and collect funds. Create images that will touch society, take responsibility for your country, to be accountable to your actions. Go see malnutrition in its raw form and get inspired. As privileged students, we must be aware of how lucky we are, and with every fibre of our being, strive to help society. 

The event ended with all of us feeling renewed sense of determination. The Indian Impact is an easy way to make a difference and we truly hope we can make our efforts count.  We the students of Oakridge were extremely delighted to attend the session and also honoured to witness Mr Ratan Tata.

By Apoorva Polishetty X C and Meghna Gundluru XI E

Our Student Sanjana (class X) asking question to Mr Tata

The group went for the Session