Guest Blog - Krupa Patel, age 21 social entrepreneur

I am a social activist & entrepreneur dedicated to stimulating innovation geared for positive social change. I continuously strive towards self-improvement and am dedicated to mobilizing others to realize & fulfill their potential so to heighten their contribution to the world.

I initially became interested in the alleviation of poverty from first hand exposure to the developing world from a very early age, specifically rural India, which contrasted starkly with the comfortable lifestyle I had led in the UK. At such a young age the revelation of there being this alternate ‘reality’, far different from the one I knew, and the unexplainable levels of inequality present within our world, ignited a fierce fire within me to become a force for change.

Following this passion while still in my teens I independently traveled to Ghana as a volunteer, parallel to full time studies. This trip transpired into the inception of TEACH - Time to Empower Africa's Children, and taking on the personal commitment to work with the underprivileged to adopt solutions, via education, to the problems they faced in a way that did not create a dependency culture.

After having dedicated the last 5 years to developing and driving international NGO 'TEACH', within 4 countries (UK, Canada, Ghana & Tanzania), I now live and work full time in Tanzania. I fully embrace my role as Founding Director and I'm passionate about young change-makers being strongly involved at strategic decision making levels of frontline organisations due to the dynamism with which we work and the shameless idealism we use in creating a vision for the future.

Founding TEACH represented an ideal platform to engage communities of underprivileged youth who displayed a vibrant vitality and an inherent ability amongst themselves to solve their own problems, which needed enabling and empowerment. As I continue to pursue this exciting and naturally evolving path, I find that initial fire to "be the change I want to see in the world" remains relentlessly ablaze.