A 17-year-old kid, Parth Sarthi, who has an inclination towards making a difference from a young age, is trying to create opportunities for children in need. By Team Viva
When most children of his age are obsessing over that pimple on their nose or even a lack of response on an Instagram story, Parth Sarthi Krishna, a Class XII student, had much bigger plans. He got together children from a juvenile home in Noida under the aegis of his NGO Rasta and put up Tarang, a virtual musical show on Teacher’s Day.
The children sang patriotic songs. A kid while singing Sare Jahan Se Accha felt proud as an Indian. Another child sang Aye Malik Tere Bande Hum, which reminded the audience of Do Aankhen Barah Haath, a cult film of 1957 by V Shantaram. The film was inspired by the story of an ‘open prison’ experiment, something which found a resonance with the children of juvenile home.
The chief guest, CDO, Anil Kumar Singh, said that he could see the faces of these children glow earnestly. “Rasta has shown the path for the better future of these children who had land at the juvenile home on account of unfortunate circumstances,” he added.
Parth has had an inclination towards making a difference from a young age. “I realised that people usually focus on academic growth but there should be an emphasis on holistic development,” he said. So he got involved with the children of Apna Ghar, who had the urge to excel at other things besides academics. “Music is my forte and I have performed at several places. I got children on board, who were interested in music and trained them,” he said. Parth has founded Rasta at the age of 15 in 2018.
He became involved with the juvenile centre when he heard that some children had developed COVID-19 there and others had tried to run away. “It was at that time that I thought that we should do a workshop at a juvenile centre virtually. The workshop was for two to three weeks. The children were singing very well. Since Teacher’s Day was coming up, we scheduled a performance. Getting them on board was initially a problem but music does have a way of bringing down barriers,” said he.
Parth is the recipient of Pradhan Mantri Bal Rashtriya Puraskar for social work. He was responsible for reuniting 21 children who had run away from their homes. “I was volunteering at the New Delhi Railway Station and realised that many of them did not remember anything about themselves. Some of them could not even recall their real names and it was impossible to trace them with their nicknames,” Parth said. He figured out that the Aadhar Card could be put to good use as it uses biometrics. “If you have an Aadhar Card and try to enroll again, the system rejects it. The existing Aadhar Card was used to reunite them with their family,” he added.
While nobody from his family is into any kind of social work, they have been very supportive. “I initially started volunteering during summer vacations and gradually became involved more deeply with different initiatives,” he said.
He is also the co-founder of Assist, another NGO which works on inclusive basketball for physically challenged students. He has organised an exhibition match and had planned a North India league of Inclusive basketball in April, which had to be postponed due to the pandemic.
