Ridheiy Verma

Global soul

My name is Ridheiy Verma. I am 17 years old. I study in 12th grade at The Future Kids School, in Hyderabad. I am a very passionate dancer and love to dance. I am learning 2 different Indian classical dance styles and completed 3 years of ballet. I doodle as a creative pursuit. My aim is to become a professional dancer after I complete my studies. I also want to start an orphanage and spend time doing philanthropy. Being an adopted child to my parents, I realised there is a lack of awareness that surrounds adoption in India. Adoption of children is also a taboo subject. I have been given the opportunity of a good life and would like to do the same for other children. I wish to be able to provide them decent education and access to good facilities as well as families who love and take care of them

I am passionate about helping children who have behavioural disorders. I hope to be able to do that through my experiences. I am a child who has ADHD. As a child, I have faced a lot of difficulties in my daily life. It was hard for me to talk to people about my problems due to lack of awareness of mental health issues. People didn’t understand my difficulties and often assumed that I couldn’t do anything and was misbehaving on purpose. I was ostracized and called lazy. Even counsellors could not help and misdiagnosed me with Dyslexia. Lack of awareness of ADHD affected my academics to a great extent as well. Finally, my diagnosis came through correctly when a UK based physician prescribed some tests and spoke to me. Currently, I am being treated for ADHD and I have been doing well in my studies and extra-curricular activities. In India, the awareness about these conditions are very low and people are very closed minded about counseling and medication. They pass inappropriate judgments about such kids and are insensitive towards them.

An idea I would like to bring out to India in a big way, would be on the relevance of adding Performing Arts in The Educational Curriculum. The relevant speakers for this idea would be performing artists themselves who have succeeded in balancing their education as well as their career. Such people should be able to speak to students about different learning styles and expression of creativity through performing arts. I want to feature this idea as the Indian education system currently focusses on a rote system of learning with practically no presence of performing arts as a main stream educational subject. Students are being churned out similar to an assembly line and are mostly unemployable. The reason for this is performing arts as a career is not encouraged, neither in homes nor in schools.

I am lucky that both my parents are TEDx organizers. The TED platform has opened my mind to new possibilities and has allowed me to make new friends and connect with different kind of people. It has also helped me in broadening my views. I now feel a sense of responsibility towards other children, the environment and upliftment of girls. I feel this could give me an excellent platform to bring together all the right people that can make the difference. I want to help build a young community of Thinkers, Enablers and Doers too. My favourite talk is - Lizzie Velasquez (How do you define yourself?) - I think she is a very strong person. Despite the difficulties she has faced in her life, she has always been a very brave person with a great spirit. She is very positive and she doesn’t let anything affect her. She is also a very determined person and that’s why I like her talk. She talks to us on how she takes everything in life with a pinch of salt

Doodling. They usually like the artwork that I create.