About Me
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Kina And Her Cause
Sep 19, 2020, 3 smiles
About a week ago, Amritha and I got the pleasure of interviewing a 14-year-old girl, Kina Desai, who's started an inspiring effort called 'Draws for a Cause'. The premise of 'Draws for a Cause' was to donate a pair of underwear to children in need in Central America for every pair purchased. Below is the transcript from our amazing interview with her!
Lena: How did 'Draws for Cause' start, and what's the root of the inspiration for starting it?
Kina: Last Summer, around August, I visited the Texas-Mexico border and volunteered in McAllen, Texas and Mexico and while there I volunteered in care centers with asylum seekers and the majority of them were from Central America. So as I was volunteering, the highlight of my time there was definitely volunteering with children at the care centers and I just spent a lot of time there with them and would kind of hear ... Read Full Story
Teen Interview With Nitya Devisetti
Aug 19, 2020, 4 smiles
Nitya Devisetti is a senior in high school in the Bay Area. In early May, she started the ‘Ma(s)king a Difference' non-profit organization to donate masks and cards to help those in need, and bring the community together. I had the pleasure of holding an interview with her to get to know a bit more about her, ‘Ma(s)king a Difference’, the struggles of being a teen in Silicon Valley, veganism, community, and much more.
Below is a transcript of our conversation.
Lena: I just wanted to know how you got ‘Ma(s)king a Difference’ started. I know there was a little bit of background on Karunavirus.org, but I want to know your thought process going into it, and what really motivated you.
Nitya: Yeah. In the beginning, my mom was donating money to India and I was like “Why are you donating money to India? We live here.” and she was like “Yeah, but ... Read Full Story
First Teen Awakin Call Reflections
Jul 02, 2020, 4 comments, 15 smiles
This past Tuesday (June 30th), Anha, Leela, and I held our first Teen Awakin Call as a project for the ServiceSpace Internship. It was the most enlightening experiences of my life. And after just a week of preparation, the three of us managed to pull together this amazing Teen Awakin Call with our amazing special guest, Melissa Stephens.
I'm especially proud of our teamwork and how diligently everyone communicated with one another. I think the main reason why the call ran smoothly was because our chemistry as a team worked so well. I was definitely very nervous before the call and Anha and Leela kept reminding us that it will all work out perfectly and that we just needed to be present. They were so right.
The idea behind a Teen Awakin Call was to create a space similar to the Awakin Calls where we can ask questions to a guest and ... Read Full Story
Awakin Teens On Success :)
Nov 13, 2019, 3 comments, 21 smiles
This last weekend we had another Teen Awakin meeting at Banyan Grove, which turned out to be a really 'awakening' experience.
Before the day of service, a few of us came the evening before to volunteer and prep, and also circle up together after a couple months. On this first night, our two brilliant guest speakers, Tim and Vishesh led me and about 10 other teens (plus Audrey!) through an intimate circle. We discussed what true success meant to us and some of the conflicts we face when trying to reach whatever that success was to us. My favorite part of the night was when we split into two groups, one mediated by Vishesh and one by Tim. The idea of these smaller circles were to take the really deep questions we thought of prior when discussing success, and to pick out smaller questions which we could answer.
A common question seemed ... Read Full Story
