Hyderabad: Student duo Ankitha Reddy & Rhea Thakkal on awareness journey to boost poor kids mental health

Hyderabad: Two city students, Ankitha Reddy and Rhea Thakkal of class 12 of Chirec International School embarked on a journey to provide mental health support and life skills to the underprivileged children of the society while simultaneously raising mental health awareness. The two co-founders had started this organisation in 2019 when they took part in the '1Million1Billion future leader programme'.

While working on different projects such as life skills and mental health realizing that they have a similar passion to work on, they, therefore, decided to work together. Initially, they started visiting government schools and orphanages to conduct over 70 interviews to ask children what they need and their wants. "We faced a major challenge as many people were sceptical about our project.

People questioned our capabilities that we are teaching children who are just 5 years younger than us and we are still in school speaking of words like mental health. That is why reaching out to government schools and orphanages in the beginning, was tough.

We reached out to our family, friends to find contacts and found immense support from them." said 17-yeard old, Rhea. We could see many children were apprehensive to speak on camera so basic life skills were imparted to them and found better results, she added.

After attempting trial and error, Ankita and Rhea made a new model to reach out to children. They partnered with Manojagriti, a team of psychologists, and have been working closely with Dr Geetha Challa. "The psychologists took sessions for the children and besides, we made models for life skills and carried them out in government schools and orphanages," said Ankita.

They raised fundraisers of around 1 lakh to help to provide in-person sessions to underprivileged students as thepsychologists were charging 5,000 per session. Besides, the founders also raised funds around 15 lakhs for Akshaya Patra.

Subsequently, the founders were selected to present their project in the 5th 1M1B Activate Impact Summit held at the UN HQ, New York City. However, they had to change the project model due to the pandemic and came up with video models to teach students with one relatable topic for children.

"We didn't want to halt our aid to these children, so we continued the work with many volunteers from different schools across the city. We would talk about loneliness, pressure, social anxiety. Now, the organisation is divided into two aspects: mental health video modules and media impact." said 17-year-old Ankitha.

They said the video models are not limited to Hyderabad. These videos are translated into English and Telugu so no language barrier will be faced by children.

Explaining the meaning of their organisation Rhea said: "Vishwasa means confidence, belief, and hope. We want to instil these in children through our program.

We plan to reach more schools not just in Hyderabad but outside the city and partner with organisations who have a similar passion and working on the same projects as us to break the stigma of mental health in society. Currently, Vishwasa is providing the video modules to 250 children and are helping 8 government schools across the city, they added.