Torsha
CHAKRAVERTY

Verdure, Founder
Youth Councillor, KIDsforSDGs

India

Torsha is a 17-year-old student from Navi Mumbai, India who believes that humans are the most precious resources this world has–resources that deserve to be nurtured and grown. She is working to create a world where healthcare and education are easily available and accessible to every individual, irrespective of caste, creed, gender, nationality or race. Growing up in different cities of India, she has seen how cultural and social differences determine opinions, tendencies, and behaviors to a large extent, and believes that education and awareness of this diversity can be leveraged to empower and develop communities, tying them together.

Every summer break, Torsha would go to her grandfather’s lush green ashram, where he promoted natural health and wellness, the calming effect of nature on the mind and body. When her grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, she witnessed two things – the difficulties of treatment in expensive urban cities, and the actual positive impact that nature had made on her grandmother’s health. She then decided to found Verdure, an organization that promotes natural healing through resources and products, and works with NGOs to provide low-cost lodging and food for patients seeking treatment in cities.

Verdure has taken a multi-stakeholder approach in Mumbai to spread awareness about the healing properties of nature, as well as simple ways to combat diseases and medical situations, like self-breast examinations and CPR. Through its platform, it has sold 500+ accessories made of the stem of a plant, and has used this money to sponsor patients and maintain lodging and food facilities at local cancer homes. Verdure has also organized collaborative and interactive online sessions on topics like nutrition. Verdure aims to connect nature with health on a much larger scale, and spread its message across countries. 

Verdure is, and will be, a deeply personal project for Torsha, one that she hopes will make a deep impact on the people who share its philosophy. She believes that collaboration and empathy will help educate and revolutionize health and well-being.

Torsha wants to use her education to explore her interdisciplinary academic passions–sociology, creative writing and math–and combine them with making real change. Just like her academic and personal areas of interest, she trusts that all the communities and nations of the world are interdependent, and deepening these feelings of togetherness and dependency can impact both individuals and institutions. She wants to be exposed to more diverse communities, people with various socio-economic backgrounds and their voices, to contribute not just to her local community, but the larger, wider world.