Youth's mission to help kids nurture latent talent

A 28-year-old techie-turned-social activist held more than 4,000 children from poor background realise their full potential through fun activities. Acknowledging his desire Milind Chandwani started "Camp Diaries" a non-governmental organization that works towards empowering and shaping lives of children from government schools.

It's run by a group of youngsters who conducts camps in government and low-income private schools, where the kids are introduced to a variety of activities like music, instruments, dance, drama, arts and science experiments.

The kids are given the freedom to choose the activity which suits their interests and over a span of five weeks they are trained in the activities of their choice. The kids are helped in honing their skills and given an opportunity to showcase their talents by organising shows which are open to the public and through YouTube channels owned and operated by the kids themselves.

Camp Diaries had successfully conducted camps and workshops in government and low-income private schools in 4 cities – Hyderabad, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Bengaluru. Now, Milind is focused on expanding Camp Diaries to other cities as he wants to impact more kids and change their lives for the better.

"Currently, we are working on expanding to 15 cities, and plan to impact more than 12,000 kids in 13 different states. Hope everything works according to plan," he smiles. When it comes to challenges, Milind says that getting volunteers has never been a tough task as young people today really want to give back to society.

I have received over 10,000 volunteer sign-ups from 50 different cities now. But a paucity of funds has been the greatest challenge for the team. As every camp they conduct is free and they do not say 'no' to any child, they are always short on funds.

Camps for children

Imran and Taqueen, students of Government High School, Bandimet, are inspired by Milind and Camp Diaries in general. They decided to conduct camps for children from impoverished backgrounds under 'Children's Camp Diaries' – an initiative for the children, by the children.

What they loved about Camp Diaries is the fact that in addition to improving their skills, nurturing their talents and getting better at different activities, they learned how to be independent. They became empowered enough to conduct camps on their own.

Children's Camp Diaries has impacted over 400 students in Hyderabad now. The camps are conducted for 5 weekends in each school. Born in a middle class family, Milind completed his engineering and worked in Infosys and other companies for about three years.

His dream is to start a school combined with an old-age home, where elders can impart values and guidance to the young children, who can in turn care for the elderly.