Mihir's Blog

  I kicked off backpack drive in the summer of 2025. This was mainly driven by my experience of 2024 where I saw children at Sharp memorial struggling for basic school supplies. I collected around 100 gently used and brand new backpacks that were donated to me by people from all walks of life. These backpacks will be mailed to the school this year for students to use in the current academic year. This experience got me thinking that things laying around as "spare" or "old" that we take for granted can be of great value for others. This also motivated my community to donate and in thinking that they were able to make a change in these kids' lives! Donation bin outside my house                                                                      With the entire backpack collection!

      In July of 2024, I volunteer taught at Sharp Memorial School for the Blind located in Rajpur, located just north of Dehradun—the capital of Uttarakhand—in India. As the name implies, the school is accommodating to but not exclusive to blind children. The school is K – 8 for , with one class for each grade. There are separate classes for blind/visually impaired students and students that visually abled students for grades K – 5, and grades 6 –8 have both students learning together, in the same class, with one visually able student assigned to help one of the visually disabled students. I had the opportunity to teach all grades at least once and different subjects, such as math, English, geography, environmental studies and Hindi. In addition, I made educational posters to aide in the students understanding of the material, since there were no Smartboards and only six computers in the whole school. In addition to no Smartboards, there were no water fountains, air...