GAP Intensive with Delhi Changemakers – Raashi Anand & Shobhit Mathur

Raashi Anand and Shobhit Mathur, as distinct their initiatives maybe, their passion and dedication to work for the underprivileged is the same. Meeting both these spirited individuals in Delhi for the GAP Intensive was undoubtedly a heart-warming experience for all of us. All the hard work, we as a team had been putting into the Intensive was finally about to get implemented.

As Dr. Loretta Scott once said- “We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone”. Keeping the same in mind, we were ready with a strong ‘A’ team for both the Changemakers. All the team members, Coach Shyam Malhotra, Intensive leader Arun Verma founder of AVDS, Gaurav Shah founder of Indian School of Development Management, Vipul Mathur Co-founder of Qilo and the student volunteer Samhita were all set to meet the two Changemakers.

Raashi Anand, Founder of Lakshyam

We reached the Lakshyam centre in Ghaziabad around 10 AM where we were greeted by the happy faces of the students. It was indeed a delight to see the enthusiasm of the kids taking their lessons there.

Left to right: Anusha – GAP Accelerate and Experts Lead, Changemaker Raashi Anand, Coach Shyam Malhotra, Arun Verma – Founder of AVDS, , Gaurav Shah –  founder of Indian School of Development Management.

The centre was a small building with few classrooms and an open play area, but one could easily sense the huge value this quite little place is adding to the lives of these kids.

Raashi’s dedication for the cause can be seen through the numerous activities that Lakshyam is Engaged in. Right from child welfare, health, education and women empowerment, she is making sure to not leave any stone unturned for supporting the cause she believes in.

Another quality of Raashi I really liked was the modesty with which she opened up with the ‘A’ team while talking about her journey so far. Her vision, mission and even the challenges she faces got us all really interested in her work. She shared information about her initiative and all the activities Lakshyam has been doing for women and children.

The ‘A’ team discussions with Raashi included topics like her aim, areas where Lakshyam needs assistance, annual budgeting, the kind of model they want to work on, conditions for exit, mix of types of funding to pitch for based on the project categories any many more.

The whole meeting was an insightful experience for everyone and we are looking forward to doing some wonderful work along with Lakshyam and Raashi in the coming 1 year.

Shobit Mathur, Founder of TallBird 

Second half of the day was spent in discussions with Changemaker Shobhit, the co-founder of TallBird, in Noida. Like most of our Changemakers, Shobhit’s journey has also been an interesting one with lots of ups and downs. He is a conscientious individual who aims to create employment opportunities for the ones who struggle to find entry level blue collar jobs.

As time went by, there were numerous points about Shobhit’s initiative that got discussed amongst all of us. These included focus points like what he wants to do and how he wants to do it, what will it take for him to do it and what would be the one key problem that he wants to solve through his initiative.

Shobhit explained how Tallbird evolved with time and how after numerous studies, surveys and implementations, led him to where Tallbird is today. He told us that his team is presently working on creating a job portal through an App and that will run on a community based model.

Overall it was a wonderful experience with both the Changemakers as well as the ‘A’ team.

We are all buckled up to work towards dramatically increasing the impact of both these initiatives. As it is, the GAP Intensive is a year-long program and we couldn’t be more excited for taking it ahead with our amazing Changemakers.

Left to right : Shobit Mathur – Founder of TallBird, Arun Verma  –  Founder of AVDS and Vipul Mathur – Co-founder of Qilo