Multitalented Boy - Mr. Kushal Khemani

Meet 13 year old Changemaker, Innovator and Entrepreneur

Kushal Khemani was born in Mumbai in 2009. He has travelled the world and lived in many countries and cultures. He is one of the youngest black belt in Teak-won-do in his state at the age of 6. He is an avid reader, creative cartoonist, Efficient App developer, Website designer, robotics enthusiast, Sketch artist, Rubik’s cube expert, swimmer, golfer, Guitarist… and more. He has won many trophies, medals and certificates in academics and Robotics. He is a car designer in the making. He gets inspired by people and nature around him and created fabulous artifacts. Kushal believes in ”Keep going…don’t stop”.

He has received many accolades for training 112+ teachers on how to move from offline to online mode of working during this pandemic thru his YouTube channel ALLSPARK INFINITE and on-call support. He is the founder of “SparkX” Animal welfare that rescues and feeds birds and animals. He has authored 3 books to encourage his fellow students to have a progressive student life, has completing 100+ certificates and shares all his knowledge with the under privileged for free on his channel that has 100 videos for the same, he writes a blog on life skills needed to survive in the 21st century, has developed many apps and designed websites to support these causes. He is on a mission to spread positivity and happiness through his deeds and inspire his generation to take initiatives.

Kushal is a recipient of Pramerica-Spirit of community international Award, I-Inspire award, Tare Zameen par shinning star Award, YUVA Award, Corona Warrior Award from India Book of Records and Young Transformer award from Nanha Gyan foundation for his social service among many other national and International Awards.

Kushal has been inspiring and motivating teenagers. He was recently invited to share his ideas at a TEDx event organized by CCOEW (Cummins College of Engineering for Women), Pune. He enlightened 300+ audience on his talk on Innovation available at https: //youtu.be/azsdaxrU6ik.

Kushal’s Mission

His mission is to make human beings positive and happy; not only around him but around the world. He always laments - We will be happy if we are focused, organized and do things that interest us. We should keep learning. Kushal wants to share this thought through his actions. Hence, all the initiatives Kushal has taken revolve around this. He wants to touch as many hearts as possible, by creating, by helping, by being there..

Few of Kushal’s initiatives

1. Helping Teachers teach:

At the onset of COVID-19, when online classes started, Kushal realized that not all teachers were adept with technical skills. His heart pounded over the hardships of the teachers who would need to handle very young kids and technology together. He decided to come up with on call support for pre-primary teachers and started assisting fresh teachers with International Institute of Teachers Training.

He helped 112+ teachers move from offline to online mode of working during this pandemic. He also conducted sessions from his learnings and imparted trainings to teachers on ways of using ZOOM effectively, understanding MS Office and leveraging MS PowerPoint for animated and effective presentations for hundreds of pre-primary kids. His teachers appreciated the idea and got a lot of knowledge which was required during this pandemic.

The new normal is to work remotely, study online, shop from your couch and limit physical interactions. This needs education technology to improvise and come up with innovative solutions that will enable collaboration in class, smoothen teacher transitions, leverage holograms and AR/VR technology. Hence, he believes that this method and beyond will be used by schools going forward.

Impact

· Kushal got to train 112+ teachers. He helped them with preparation of MS powerpoint, Animations and graphics to explain subjects to pre-primary students for many playgroup/ KG classes.

· He also got to sharpen his skills doing the same, manage time for call support system after training and make videos to further help them.

· Kushal promises that the 110+ videos and his helpline will be available forever as a free resource.

Effort and Commitment

· He takes sessions and then calls to support. He made videos as well. This took at least 2-3 hours a day initially and then it reduced.

· Time Management was an obstacle, but he learned how to distribute his day in a productive manner and reduced his TV time and Play time to help teachers

· Teaching Zoom on whatsapp to each teacher was difficult and time consuming. He took sessions of other aspects on Zoom then.

· It is a continued support provided.

o He has plans to take free sessions on multimedia for all future teachers and any teacher who needs support in technology related domain.

2. Free technical training to underprivileged:

During the pandemic, Kushal took 100+ certifications from many academies such as IIT Mumbai, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Accenture, Griffith University and the likes. He learnt about artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT, Data Sciences, Power electronics, Electrical vehicles, VR/AR, etc.

He realized that it can get very expensive and time consuming to learn new technologies. Not all have the money and time to do so. Hence, he created his YouTube channel- AllSpark Infinite.

Kushal’s thought behind this channel is to share his learnings with students of his age group and seed the urge in them to provide free learning to under privileged children.

Every individual has a unique spark which can be infinite. Hence the name ALL Spark Infinite.

Through his YouTube channel, he has been imparting free video trainings on Elocution, Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, ways to end procrastination, preparing professional word documents, discussing social causes like water pollution, growing plants on mars and admiring his inspiration – Mr. Elon Musk.

Kushal has learnt to film/shoot and edit his channel videos on his own. He has also made his own advertisements. He has just put his knowledge to noble use and has been instilling the spark in all youngsters like him to do so.

Impact

· He has 250+ students as subscribers who watch and learn from his 120+ videos that he has on his channel. Many people visit his channel on an adhoc basis and he is able to share whatever he has learnt.

· In his words – “Learning new things keep us busy and motivated.”

Effort and Commitment

Kushal uploads one video a week that takes around 1 hour to make but before he does so he has to complete his certification for which he puts 5-6 hours a week. For last 2 and half years, he has continued to share videos on latest topics that people are interested to learn.

3. Kushal’s BLOG site (https://allsparkinfinite.blogspot.com/), aims to discuss, in tiny capsules, latest technologies, traits, characteristics, habits and skills needed to survive and thrive in the indoor and the new modern world.

Impact

Over 2500 people have read his blog and have appreciated the content and encouraged him to write more.

Effort and Commitment

He writes his blog once a month and spends close to 5 hrs in a month on this activity.

4. Motivating children of his age during Pandemic:

Every author shares experiences, narrates stories and imparts their knowledge by putting in their precious time into their book. In our free time, we usually read books but not many authors write motivational books for children or try to solve our day to day problems.

During the pandemic many of his friends were feeling low and he felt this case may be with every child in the world. He wanted to touch as many lives as possible in this world Hence, Kushal thought of writing a book that could cover all of that and much more. You would all feel like getting a motivational punch after reading Kushal’s book.

Impact

Kushal’s book on 11 Secrets to A Progressive Student Life has been admired by 1500+ readers so far. Through his book, he has been motivating students to bring in the desired change in the world and instilling positive thinking during their trying times.

Kushal has given free Kindle copies to all his teachers, friends and family and distributed 1000 copies to the underprivileged in Pune.

Effort and Commitment

It took him little over 3 months to complete this book. He started writing in March 2020 when the whole world got hit with COVID and some of his exams got cancelled. He says he got a lot of spare time to think and think positively. His book is available on Amazon since 29th June 2020.

5. App Development

Necessity has been the mother of all invention and every problem has to have a solution. When Kushal sees any problem, his brain cells get triggered and he looks for solutions that can ease the ordeal. When Kushal first saw a disabled (mute) person, he was unable to comprehend his thoughts. That resulted in him designing an app for people who cannot speak. He used technology to “give voice to their words”.

Kushal always gets inspired by people and nature around. At the age of 9 and as a 4th grader, he dedicated 13 mobile applications that he had developed to his school. The school motivated him to share his learnings and app development skills with his classmates. He has also made an app for teachers tracking and one for teachers training.

Impact

· He has provided links to his apps to whoever is in need. They are free to share.

Effort and Commitment

· He wishes to make more such apps to help the community.

6. As part of the Social Entrepreneurship program with GOODCLAP, Kushal formed SPARKX Animal Welfare Foundation to rescue and feed animals in the month of September 2020.

Impact

He has rescued 28 animals/birds and arranged resources to feed many on a daily basis.

Effort and Commitment

Kushal spends close to an hour feeding the animals on a daily basis. He has plans to expand this initiative to many more societies in his area in the future.

7. Pandemic Health

Kushal has spun off a “not for profit” initiative with NGOs to organize health check-up camps across India.

Kushal has enabled registration for health check-up camps across India in association with 4 NGOs and through MyGate application at highly subsidised rates under the banner of "Pandemic Health". He has been in constant touch with Covid impacted areas and has organised virtual emotional well-being sessions through mind coach counsellors in Delhi, Pune, Mumbai and Bhopal which helped 93 people.

He also contributed monetarily to NGOs — Persistent Foundation and GD Anklesaria Dialysis Centre NGOs. The monetary contributions were made to organise oxygen camps and arrange concentrators in remote areas of Ratlam and Nagpur. During COVID second wave, Kushal helped in organising 19 camps in 7 states.

Kushal’s goal for the Pandemic Health initiative is to get health check-up camps organised across 29 states of India.

Most people in rural India don't have the same access to healthcare facilities like we have here in cities. In a small way, Kushal tried to provide whatever little he could to fight the pandemic. His family and his school wholeheartedly supported him in this initiative.

8. Environmentalist by founding 3DR NOBLE

This is another thoughtful initiative of Kushal that prints customised 3D products from filaments made from plastic bottles, bags, toys and other recycled plastic. 50% of the profits are being used to feed and rescue Animals.

SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT, USE PRODUCTS MADE FROM RECYCLED PLASTIC

– Motto of Kushal Khemani

He thinks 3D printing has the potential of revolutionizing product designs and manufacturing products for a vast range of fields while using the plastic waste generated. It is a win-win for both the manufacturer as well as the environment.

He intends to commercialize his website: https://sites.google.com/view/3drnoble/home?authuser=2

9. Website Designing- The websites for all the above initiatives have been designed by Kushal. He has designed website for his school projects as well. Kushal learnt to design on his own using help available on the internet. He likes making most of the technology available.

10. Kushal anchors talent shows for the under privileged children on facebook.

Summary of Social Impact of all initiatives

o 112+ teachers who have learned to move from offline to online teaching taking His help. His contributions are a part of their syllabus now.

o 25000+ students (all branches) of his school have been impressed by his book. Some have been inspired and have written books of their own. He has sold 500+ copies.

o 250+ students are learning from by his channel. He has conducting many workshops for India First Robotics, Makers duniya, etc on technical topics. He has 120 videos and continues to add 1 each week.

o Over 2500 people have read his blog and have appreciated the content and encouraged him to write more. Many more are get added each day. He wants to continue to write.

o His society has 300 families who contribute to his Animal Welfare initiative on a monthly basis.

o He has been in constant touch with Covid impacted areas and organized virtual emotional well-being sessions through mind coach counsellors in Delhi, Pune, Mumbai and Bhopal which helped 93 people.

o During pandemic, he has helped in organizing 19 camps in 7 states.

Awards and Achievements

Healing light Award-Young Transformer

Romal Surana, Founder And Director of the NanhaaGyan Foundation announced these awards for individuals who are helping create competent future generations and are contributing towards shaping the society through their efforts.

I Inspire award

MeToWe Mission 2034 flagship award program named I-Inspire Awards , was organized on 26th January 2021 in Pune. The ceremony was the first major flagship program that facilitated 26 awardees who have been inspiration through their work and achievement. As per the organisers of the event, the first season of the award received a widespread appreciation from all sectors of the society. There were close to 100 nominations received since the nomination window opened in the month of November. It was apparent from the final list of chosen few that people from all walks of life were appreciated. The youngest award winner is master Kushal Khemani who is just 11 years of age. Kushal was given a Trophy, certificate and Rs 5000 gift Vouchers.

Tare Zameen Par shining star Award

TZP believes each child is unique. It is important to recognize different talent and skills in children. With this belief, for the 1st time ever on TZP, one of the biggest program to recognize the best talents across Maharashtra was introduced. Kushal won an Award in the Social Category. The award ceremony will be held after COVID restrictions are reduced. He was also selected to be featured in Kid’s Galaxy Magazine.

Yuva Award

In association with YUVA schools who are a group of education consultants, Kushal won the first Ever Award in the Social Category. He was felicitated with a Golden Shield, a certificate and Rs 1000 voucher.

SOF-Scholarship in English Excellence-Merit certificate will be sent to the school by Science Olympiad Foundation for Kushal Khemani.

India Book of Records-IBR has recognized Kushal Khemani as an” Ambassador of Honor, COVID-19 Hero”. He has received a T-shirt for the same.

Pramerica International Awards

Kushal has won a bronze Medal for his contribution to the society. The 'Pramerica Spirit of Community Awards' is an annual nationwide search to identify and recognize school students who have made a positive difference in their communities through volunteer community service. Introduced in India in 2010, this program is an extension of ‘The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards,’ USA.