10-Year-Old Pune Girl Ishita Katyal Becomes Youngest Indian to Speak at TED New York
Ishita is just 10 and she is challenging the notion that kids have to wait till they grow up to make a difference. She is an author, and recently became the youngest Indian to deliver a talk at a TED event.
Ishita Katyal is an author, a public speaker, an avid reader who loves the works of Ruskin Bond, a dancer, a singer and also a basketball player in her free time. And she is just 10 years old!
Recently, she added yet another feather in her cap by being the youngest Indian to speak at a TEDx event.
A student of Vibgyor High in Balewadi, Pune, Ishita delivered a talk at TED Youth Conference in New York, becoming the youngest Indian to do so.
Kids her age are often showered with questions like – ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’. Ishita answered everyone with her four minute long talk titled ‘What do you Want to be Now’. Her talk challenged the system which thinks that children aren’t mature enough to make a difference.
This young speaker’s journey with TEDx started in 2013 when she visited an event organized by TEDx Pune. She loved the event so much that she immediately contacted the organisers to be part of the team. Her passion towards the event won everyone’s heart and she was given the permission to organize TEDx Youth@Balewadi, becoming the youngest person to conduct such event at an age of eight.
In her latest talk, she speaks her heart out so that more children get inspired to follow their dreams, irrespective of their age. Other than this, Ishita has been achieving extra ordinary things since a very young age.
She realised early that she wanted to be an author, and wrote a book called “Simran’s Diary” when she was eight.
She utilised her summer break and completed the book focussing on things that go on in a child’s mind and why they should be taken seriously.
The book was published on Amazon’s Kindle Store and later printed by Partridge Publishers.
“Earlier it was very hard for me to manage everything – school, studies, TEDx, writing. Sometimes when I finished writing, I realized that I had forgotten to do my homework. Then my dad suggested me to wake up early in the morning. So at first I woke up at 6 a.m and then eventually I started waking up at 5 a.m. I would make a checklist of things I forgot, to make sure that I do them the following day in the morning,” she says.
Ishita’s New York talk has not been released yet, but you can take a look at her Bhilwara talk here-
All pics: Facebook
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