My name is Raghvendra Yadav. I am from Mumbai, I am a 16 year old.

I come from an urban slum community where education isn’t given its due consideration and where people’s major concern is if they will be able to eat food the next day or not. My family too is every day concerned about this. I have a family of 5 members my hardworking parents and my two lovely younger brothers and it's difficult to ensure food, medical care, clothes but to do that my mother works 18hrs every single day. She does work from making lunch boxes to sewing clothes and my father is a delivery boy in SWIGGY (online food delivery). He cycles every day for 15 hrs so that his children don’t face the same hazards as he does, but sadly due to the COVID 19 lockdown, he is unemployed from the last 4 months.

My parents never had enough to put me in a private school so I studied in a government school. Growing up in a community where children are subjected to substance abuse at an early age and made to work, I was lucky enough to get Teach for India (an NGO working with low-income schools to provide quality education ) in my 3rd grade and it was then I got various opportunities to learn more and more have just passed out my 10th grade from the same government school with 89.60% in Maharashtra Board Class Xth Examination 2020.

 It was last October I applied to the Prestigious United World Colleges (UWC is a global network of schools and educational programs with the shared mission of "making  education a force to unite people, nations, and cultures for peace and a sustainable future".)

I had submitted my application without a lot of hopes. Maybe it was because of the skepticism I had seen in my community that people don’t dare to dream big here. Surprisingly, I got an interview call in January just 2 days prior to my interview in UWC Mahindra college Pune, India. Well, at one place I was very excited, while at another thought of my travel was something bothering me, but with the help of my teacher( Teach for India) Fellow, I was able to make it to the college by road.

We left Mumbai 2 am at midnight reached the campus at 9:30 am half an hour late, puking and starving the whole trip. I could really see the difference between the students who had come to the interview and me, they were from really high backgrounds and had other things to take care of unlike me who was struggling with the minimum needs. I didn’t let my mind to be bothered by these thoughts and made my mind for the interview and it started with the 5 round interview process{PI, GD, Aptitude test, Group activity, Object presentation}, it was long and tiring especially when the day had started at 2 am-midnight ends with 4hour travel of reaching back in Mumbai. I completed my interviews with hopes cause the interviewers appreciated me a lot.

Almost 5 months later, I received a confirmation email of my admission to United World College Canada (UWC Pearson college) while I was back in UP, my village because we couldn’t afford to live in Mumbai in the slums due to safety and my father’s unemployment. The first thing that the college had asked for was my passport, but in the slums, we never got the need to make it, so I didn’t have a passport plus I was not in Mumbai so couldn’t get one and in a recent pandemic, train travels were banned. So, I reached out to my fellow teachers one again and they have been a constant support for me. They helped me book my flight from Varanasi to Bombay to start my visa and passport. I am back in Mumbai and have got my passport within 3 days. I will be starting with my visa process soon. Fortunately, I have received a 100% scholarship for my 2 year IB Diploma Programme In UWC Canada which will cover all my expense in Canada.

But I need you to support me to cope up with the bottlenecks which are my current worries. I don’t even have a mobile and a laptop for personal purposes. Due to the financial crisis, I have not been able to buy clothes for myself in the last 3 years, not being so important yet a need. Due to changes in climatic conditions, I will be needing a lot of resources which are a little expensive for me. I am in Mumbai but have no money at all to cover my living expenses and my family has loans to repay.

I dream of becoming a role model and an inspiration for my community because I feel the bars of inequality are so high in these times between the rich and poor that it can take centuries to be equal. Due to this, families like mine develop skepticism and withhold their ambitions and limit themselves and their dreams.

I want to be a ray of hope to them that things are possible if you work hard. I want to be an inspiration cum a sense of possibility for them that nothing can be a barrier if you have merit. 

On the basis of merit, I have been part of Teach for All, Student Advisory Council as well.
https://globallearninglab.teachforall.org/provocation-paper-page/1427/leadership-during-covid-19-raghvendra-yadav

I have also led many initiatives in my community, my story has documented by KIDS EDUCATION REVOLUTION AND TEACH FOR ALL

If you contribute to this, you are contributing to a more equitable world. You are trying to lift the unlifted. I just want you to imagine what this could mean to the families around me and my own family. Your contribution can help generations to come out of this cycle of poverty. HELP US TO MAKE THIS MOVEMENT BETTER.