Hemadarshini founded and led a project known as Be the Change. Inspired by Gandhi’s words “Be the change you wish to see in the world”, she started this project with the main goal of taking away the burden of the need for essential items like water, food, clothing, and feminine products so young women around the world can focus on their education for a brighter future. She held local drives in which she collected food, books, menstrual products, etc. to donate to local charities such as Poway Interfaith and San Diego Food Bank. She also partnered with organizations like UNICEF and Akshaya Patra to donate money and goods she raised to people internationally, including countries like India, Pakistan, and Africa. In total, she has donated 15,000 supplies locally and internationally. Her next goal is to use the grant money to create a free learning curriculum for these girls to get educated.

Shravani Chiddarwar is a senior at Rancho Bernardo High School. She is the president of a club on campus called That's on Period, dedicated to destigmatizing menstrual health and increasing access to menstrual products on campus. She has held numerous drives and distributed products throughout her community as well as provided products on her school campus. Shravani was honored to be selected as the 2022 recipient of the SD Nari Scholarship award. She hopes she can continue the project to a larger scale and address the lack of equity, one day enough to stir long-term change.

Congratulations to our SD Nari Scholarship 2021 Winner - Madhavi Akella, a past senior from Scripps Ranch High School. Madhavi was the cofounder of the project Covers for Lives, an organization that aims to help homeless and low-income youth in San Diego. The organization was started in March 2020, and since then, they have donated essential items to Father Joe's Villages, Rachel's Women's Center, and more! Their biggest project is their annual menstrual product drive. Since 1 in 4 teen students have missed class because they did not have access to hygienic affordable period care products, all the goods from the menstrual product drive go towards helping students. In 2020, Covers for Lives donated over 20,500 menstrual products to the San Diego Youth and Children in Transition Program. They hope to donate even more in the coming years!

The 2020 SD Nari Youth Committee Scholarship was awarded to Kimiya Ghassemzadeh, a past senior from Del Norte High School. Kimiya's project was in collaboration with the Distinguished Young Womens' Program of San Diego, in which she spent her weekends running DYW workshops, ranging from self-defense arts to mock interviews. Her ultimate goal was to seek out and encourage young high school girls to “be their best selves”. Kimiya was awarded the $500 SDNari Youth Committee Scholarship out of numerous applicants, due to her hard work of empowering other young high school girls in San Diego to pursue their goals through the DYW program!