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This 13-year-old is crowdsourcing school supplies for underprivileged children in Africa
13-year-old Ishan Patel founded ‘Planting Pencils’ an organisation that crowdsources school supplies to children in Africa, India and the United States. He is currently one of the youngest CEOs in the world.
Ishaan Patel may be only 13 years old, but he's way ahead of many teenagers his age. Just like any other boy, he works hard to keep his grades up at school and has a variety of interests and hobbies.
But what sets him apart is the organisation he founded and his desire to help children from lesser developed parts of the world to gain better access to education. 'Planting Pencils', his organisation crowdsources school supplies to children in Africa, India and the United States. He holds the privilege of being one of the youngest CEOs in the world.
Passionate and generous by upbringing, what sparked an inspiration was the pictures he saw and stories he heard about underprivileged children from his aunt who had returned from volunteer work in India. She told him how children often had to forgo their education in order to support their families. He learned of the quality of education in different countries around the world and took leadership courses before starting his organisation.
Under the watchful guidance of his mother, he managed to raise funds through innovatively setting up donation boxes in different places and fund-raising events. Donations to US schools are directly handed over to respective schools while donations to schools overseas are given to representatives of the schools.
Through his work, meeting and talking to people and through events, Ishaan hopes to make his peers understand how fortunate they are as compared to underprivileged children living around the world.
He hopes that people would be more open hearted in donating towards education, so that the world may be a better place to live in. Planting Pencils also accepts used computers, books, stationary, laptops and tablets as forms of donation, other than money. Planting Pencils has so far raised $5500 (approx. INR 3.65 lakh) and has donated to schools in Tanzania and Ghana. Ishan soon plans to donate to a school in Jaipur.
To help Ishaan with his initiative, visit www.plantingpencils.org.