When 15-year-old Ayira Vij and Nikhil Mehtani from Delhi decide to do something together, you can bet it will be for some social cause. The latest initiative of the duo who launched Ayanat Foundation in March this year, is to organise a virtual fundraiser for Hemkunt Foundation’s COVID-19 relief work. The fundraiser features 40 events spread across six days, starting from June 11 and has stand-up comic Amit Tandon as the chief guest, with actors Jay Thakkar, Kashish Kanwar, Tik Tok star Rishabh Chawla, and cyber security expert Rakshit Tandon joining them in various sessions. Apart from this, doctors from Artemis Hospital, Delhi will also be conducting educational and health-related sessions on topics like mental health, nutrition and organ donation.
Yet, it is not all serious stuff, informs Ayira: “The event will also have a lot of music, poetry, gaming nights, art competition, rap battle, mimicry and beat-boxing. All the events will be on Instagram on our handle. Once we start the meeting we will be making the meeting credentials public.”
In planning this complex event, the duo found support in 11 of their friends, as well as volunteers from five countries — Uzbekistan, Guatemala, Saudi Arabia, Nepal and Canada. With as many as 400 volunteers on board, they aim to bring together the youth to work towards changing society at large.
How it all began
The focus of these school-goers had initially been on reaching out to their peers to raise awareness on environment safety. Ayira says, “We targeted our age group because it is easy to spread the message of a clean environment amongst ourselves. In our textbooks, we learn about cleanliness and air pollution. So we wanted to get a hands-on experience in protecting our environment and started with a cleanliness drive.” The group of children gathered to take care of their surroundings and were quite successful in putting a stop to littering around their colonies. That was until the lockdown was imposed in March 2020.
From the beginning of April 2020, Ayanat Foundation members began to campaign for wearing masks and staying home. “This was all amongst ourselves and the people we interact with regularly. When the situation worsened and people resorted to social media for help in sourcing medicines, beds, blood etc, we wanted to pitch in. Our parents and families helped us get the required help at hospitals,” adds Ayanat.
In their bid to help, they had to remember to do it from their homes. “We took up the task of verifying the leads. A lot of numbers and lists that were floated and got re-shared, were actually bots,” says Ayira. The team informs with pride that the Foundation helped as many as 15 patients get oxygen supply as well as beds in hospitals.
