Her contribution towards transforming the lives of underprivileged children has put her in the limelight. She was one among five delegates from India at the Youth Empowerment Asia Pacific Future Leaders Conference held in Malaysia last year and will now be one among 60 delegates at the Global Youth Summit to be held in Switzerland from July 16 to 20 this year.
Meghana Dabbara, founder of ‘Make The World Wonderful’, and Tejaswi, its general secretary, were in the city recently to participate in the International Women’s Day celebrations. Meghana was only 17, when she started the NGO Home, for the grooming of poor children, one-and-a-half years ago. The inmates, presently numbering 53, are being transformed into better citizens by developing positive attitudes and providing them with life skills.“My mother used to tell me a lot of stories on how to help others and to live harmoniously in society. When I was around 14 I wasn’t able to relate to what mom used to tell me,” Meghana recalled in an interaction with The Hindu .
“I narrated my dream to the organisers i B HUBS, an end-to-end assistance provider to a number of start ups, including social enterprises and NGOs. At first they wondered whether I was really serious but were convinced after taking a test and offered me 3-year training on various aspects like accounting, administration and organisational skills”.
Objective
“Initially, we adopted 25 children and started providing them life skills at our centre in Hyderabad. We teach them moral values, yoga and martial arts, apart from formal education. Our objective is to open 2,500 such centres all over the country by 2023 but we are yet to decide whether to adopt the franchisee model or otherwise,” she said.
“We will leverage technology to ensure that our core objectives of promoting social harmony and transforming children into better citizens through love and affection were met, irrespective of the model adopted,” she says.
“Though i B HUBS does not directly involve in fund raising, it helps us in reaching out to their clients. We maintain 100 per cent transparency and our database is open all the time. All donations are accounted for and any donor or the public can check online as to how the donations are spent,” adds Meghana.
