Inspirers: Shourya Saluja

This is the first of my Inspirers series of posts. This is to highlight and showcase special people who from an ordinary life make extraordinary things, through their ideas, determination and talent. The first post here is about a 17 year old boy, Shourya Saluja. I read about him this morning in the Times of India and I thought that I must share this with you.

Shourya Saluja, a Class 12 student of Bangalore’s Indus International School is devising a curriculum For Classes IX to XII which will create awareness about cyber safety. While most kids his age are freaking out on social networking sites, he’s rather wary of dangers lurking within these. Now, he’s developing a curriculum on cyber security with the help of Infosys which will be taught first in his school and later perhaps adopted by CBSE.

"Children disclose too much information in their profiles, they upload photos and accept random people as friends just to increase the number in their friends’ list. They don’t know what dangers this can lead to," said Shourya. Kids will also be taught how to protect themselves from dangers like phishing messages, things to look after in a Local Area Network (LAN), internal security. Shourya plans to rate the success of his programme after six months and then seek the Central Board of Secondary Education’s approval to include it in the curriculum. He says he got the idea when his 10-year-old sister asked him to create a Facebook profile with all her information. "I realized that many children are ignorant about consequences of this," he said.

While I searched the net for more info about this inspiring kid, I came across one more of his positive endeavours that will help society. Shaurya organised a Squash workshop, which was conducted by Satinder Bajwa, Harvard University Head Squash Coach, with proceeds going to a Squash academy that coaches rural children. “The best way to promote sports is through communities. If we can support the needy through such initiatives, even better,” says Shaurya. The proceeds will go to Khelshala, an organization in Attawa village in Chandigarh, which was founded by Bajwa himself with the aim of making squash accessible to underprivileged children in the villages nearby. A good squash player himself, Saluja plans to train further and play professional squash. He was ranked ninth in Malaysia, where he lived a few years back, in the Under-15 category at the Kuala Lumpur Junior Open Squash Championship 2007.  After moving to Bangalore a couple of years back, he has been participating in interschool and state championships.  His other interests include basketball, judo and football.

I’m sure Shaurya has more plans and ideas up his sleeve, that willgeneral brighten up this society more. Imagine if we could all take measures to imitate his work in the way we can. Are you an expert in singing? Couldn’t you train your watchmen’s children to sing if they’re earning just to pay for the singing classes? Imagine the speed at which our country will develop if all of us share our powers. Shaurya is a name truly deserved. Keep it going…

You can find Shaurya on Facebook or Twitter… but yes, I guess he will add you only if he knows you well. You can also visit the Khelshala Fan Page on Facebook.

Courtesy: The Times of India, Mangalore, Monday August 2nd, 2010 and Citizen Matters, Bangalore

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