Education, Environment and Empowerment – Zenith Chaudhary

“Attitude of the person leads to success or failure and we all must keep a positive outlook. With discipline and strong willingness everything can be achieved”.

Zenith Chaudhary

If we don’t love what we do then it’s a time for self analysis, this is what Zenith Chaudhary followed and She decided to change herself with the time.

Zenith, a girl born in Haryana’s middle class family had a dream to work for the environment since her childhood. She had planted many saplings during her early life and was working very silently in her own way. Four years back, she realised that she is born to do more for the environment and the society. Hence she started working more actively and engaged with many NGOs.

In Apr of 2019, she decided to improve the living conditions of the sector area in Gurugram where she is living. The area was not developed fully and other were not much concerned about its petty condition. Most of the area used to get flooded every year during rainy season. With the efforts of Zenith the things started improving. Later she joined the newly formed Resident’s Welfare Association and worked with the local administrations and the elected representatives of the city. She even succeeded in doing many things however later she was targeted by local political agendas.

Then once again with a strong determination she took reins of her directions and joined a volunteers group “I am Gurgaon” and started working towards sustainability. Meanwhile she came in contact with like minded people and socially active citizens from the city who are working  on “Aravalli Bachao” campaign. This was another milestone of her life and the entire team was very passionate about withdrawal of PLPA amendment (Punjab Land Preservation Act, 2019 – Haryana Amendment). The team met many elected representative and influential people from the society. The team went ahead with social media campaigns, silent protests, approached all possible contacts with their grievances about the environment but all in vein, the city officials supported the team but outcomes were not satisfactory. The team is currently working hard on to get the changes done.

Same time, Zenith being a biology faculty started working on the education workshops for the adolescent slum kids. While sharing her experiences, Zenith said “It was really scary to listen to their stories and I found myself inclined more towards it. With the help of my empathetic friends I arranged books, clothes for these children. I also helped them in the preparation of their school board exams”.

And then the Pandemic Corona Outbreak, normal was not normal anymore. But, the unstoppable Zenith moved her focus and decided to help the administration and community, the food insecurity was the biggest challenge in the prevailing lockdown environment. From within her neighbourhood, Zenith identified daily wagers and their depended families from the age group of as young age 3 years old till 60 years old. She stood up and coordinated to provide at least one time cooked meal to these ~300 people. This initiative was carried over for a span of 13 days. During the lockdown period she worked with a NGO “Man Se” to provide the cooked meal to the needy people and also coordinated with other govt agencies to provide grocery items.

While working on the ground in the slum areas Zenith has found another hygiene issue and  problem faced by the women staying in  these slum areas. The unavailability of sanitary pads was the biggest challenge for them and with the blessings from God Zenith got an opportunity to conduct awareness about reusable sanitary pads and she has distributed reusable sanitary pads. While sharing the experience from this duration, Zenith said “It was truly incredible to see so many people, groups and departments which came together to fight with this pandemic.”

Currently Zenith is  conducting various awareness workshops to make people aware about being careful in this pandemic and the way we manage ourselves. Very recently she privileged to be the guest speaker at GD Goenka school about Being human.

Zenith is a biology faculty in a renowned school. She is M.Sc. in Food Technology and MBA . She earned multitasking skills while staying in hostel and supporting her father in village upliftment.