In 2006, a beautiful 23-year-old Pragya Prasun was subjected to her worst nightmare. Barely 10 days after she got married, a jilted lover threw acid on her face. Ever since, her life has been about accepting the truth and trying to move ahead. Now, 35-year-old Pragya, who recently won the Nari Shakti Puraskar — the highest civilian award given to women in India — talks to us about her journey from a meek and conflicted acid attack victim to a survivor and a beacon of hope for many.

‘My foundation was born out of my greatest sorrow’

Prasun set up the Atijeevan Foundation in 2013. It is a non-governmental organisation which helps survivors of acid attacks, funding surgeries and other treatments for people recovering from an attack.[3] Every year in India there are more than 100 reported acid attacks, mainly on women, but Prasun believes the real figure exceeds 1,000.[4][6] As of 2019, the foundation had supported more than 250 survivors.[3] Surgeries are carried out at hospitals in Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai.[1] The Stanley Medical College Hospital in Chennai pledged in 2018 to support the group by offering free hair transplants.

Bonny Dave, who aims to develop products that help make world resources accessible for all. One such product built by Trestle labs is KIBO, the world’s first intelligent, personalized reading-learning companion for visually impaired people. Trestle lab also won the Tata Social Enterprise Challenge 2019-20 with KIBO as their business idea.He is a young, highly motivated individual who loves to work towards creating a social impact through his human-centric design and innovations. Interesting, right?

Trestle Labs developed Kibo XS – a device which reads printed-text across 12 Indian and multiple international languages in real-time. The 400 gms (approx.) device can be connected to a phone, laptop, or desktop. The user can place any reading material on the device, and it will read it in real-time. That’s not all; the device can also translate the same text across more than 100 languages. Furthermore, people with visually impairment can use Kibo XS to scan any document and convert it into an editable word format file. The team also created the Kibo App that has a repository of over 1 million accessible books which the user can download for free, put together in collaboration with various online digital libraries. Some of the books include NCERT and State Board textbooks ensuring that students with visual impairment can pursue their dreams without worrying about access to educational material. Kibo rightly stands for ‘Knowledge In a Box’. The Kibo App is also a text-to-audio reader. Currently, the app supports 22 languages (including 12 Indian languages).

A single incident may change a life, but in the case of Dr Glory Alexander, it transformed thousands. As the founder of Asha (Action Service and Hope for AIDS) Foundation, she has been administering affordable treatment, care, optimism and opportunity to HIV/AIDS patients for more than a decade and a half.

It’s now almost three decades since a man asked her, ‘Do you think I might have AIDS?’ – a question that made a deep impact on her. It was 1987, early days in HIV history. And Dr Alexander, gold medalist from Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, young Consultant Physician at the Baptist Hospital, Bengaluru, was stumped.

Dr. Glory Alexander’s ASHA Foundation looks after the education and nutrition needs of 120 HIV-positive children

Nalini Shekar is the co- founder and Executive Director of Hasiru Dala. Her passion lies in restoring the dignity of workers in the unorganised waste sector, improving their access to predictable livelihoods and providing social security for their families.Over the years, Nalini has trained hundreds of waste pickers on new ways of solid waste management and helped develop their skill to become waste management professionals. In addition she has worked with state officials, students and citizens, creating awareness on the need for sustainable waste management practices and integration of waste pickers.

Before her work in Bengaluru, she advocated the need for rights of survivors of violence for a decade in the US where she was honoured by the Santa Clara County Human Relations Commission, San Jose City Government and presented with a Certificate of Honour from the then Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In a career spanning 33 years, Nalini has won many accolades including the Kempegowda Award 2015, from the City of Bengaluru. In 2015, she was chosen as one of 100 women in India who have made a difference in the society by BBC.Com.

Chethan Gowda known as Chethan M (born 11 February 2000) is a social rights and health activist from India. He spent most of his childhood in the social sector.Due to an incident wherein he lost his teacher as she could not procure blood at the right time, he started his own organization titled Aahwahan Foundation Organization with an aim to make sure nobody dies due to the unavailability of blood.His efforts to make the society better made him the “Most Impactful” person in the social sector in India under the age of 21 awarded by Youth For Seva, as well as TEDx speaker. He was also recognized by Ashoka Innovators For Public as a “Youth Venturer” in 2016.Brought up in Bangalore, Chethan did his schooling from Shantiniketana School and is currently pursuing engineering at East West Institute of Technology

Chethan has co-founded three startups, Chittii, an online handwritten letter service provider cum creative arts marketplace which was started in 2018, Dream Teams, a community based organization in 2015 and Khoon, a not for profit organization in the field of Blood Donation which was started in 2016.

Meet Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju, a 23-year-old trans-woman, a medical student who recently finished her MBBS exams and is now interning at the Kasturba Medical Hospital, Manipal. Completing her MBBS, she has also earned the position of Karnataka’s first trans-woman doctor. Studying in a private medical college in coastal Karnataka, Trinetra was born as Angad Gummaraju to Bengaluru-based parents and underwent a gender confirmation surgery (GCS) abroad in February this year.

Trinetra is also a famous Vlogger who had been documenting her transition journey on her YouTube channel ‘The Trinetra Method’. She has a tremendous following on social media, but have faced numerous online harassment and name callings regularly. However, recently she shared a very empowering post revealing her life journey. Her powerful Instagram post read, “Ch*kka, tr*nny, f*ggot, m*ttha, k*jja, and countless other titles were awarded. This day forward it’s ‘Doctor’.”

 “Embarking on this journey of transition made me see the gaping holes in the profession I’d chosen. I was once thrown out of a lecture for wearing a nose pin. I wasn’t allotted a room in the girl’s hostel because I didn’t have the ‘organs’ for it. It made me realise that the flag bearers of the field still suffer from transphobia. Even when I was researching my medical options for transitioning, information wasn’t easily available. It took me a while to find the right doctors given how few there are.” She said. “Just a month ago, I finished my MBBS exams & began interning. I’d thought of this moment since the day I decided to be a doctor. Growing up, people have even called me ‘chakka’ I’d like to tell them, from this day on, I’m only known as Dr. Trinetra. And you have to accord me the respect that title deserves that I deserve. Because when I’m saving your life, you will not be concerned with the fact that I was once seen as a man, ” her inspirational story read.