Choose Your Cause

KELSEY BRICKNELL

Earlier this year, former Multicultural Committee Co-Captains, Isha Naik and Khushbu Kumari (2019), launched Choose Your Cause—a not-for-profit organisation designed to give a voice to underpublicised charities and their respective causes. They returned to the College recently to tell us all about their work.

The notion of ‘giving back’ was very much at the centre of 2019 Old Scholars, Isha and Khushbu’s St Peters experiences. In their Junior High years, they got involved with the College’s Service Learning program and, in their Senior years, took their passions to the next level, both studying the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) and incorporating their acts of service into the CAS (Creativity, Activity, Service) component of the programme.

Isha (a Prefect) and Khushbu (Head Boarder Girl) Co-Captained the 2019 Multicultural Committee with fervour. They ran Community Focus Days, organised cultural events to promote ethnic diversity, and even represented the College as one of three finalists at the 2019 Queensland Multicultural Awards. When they left the College, it made sense that they continued to build on their school-day foundations.

“We always had a vision of extending our passion outside of school,” Isha told us. “We work really well together, so we thought it would be great if we could both collaborate on something.”

With the ‘Why’ to their plan firmly in place, the pair were faced, then, with tackling the ‘What’ and the ‘How’.

“Last year, when we were thinking of ways that we could start a non-profit, we thought first of who we could support,” Isha said. “Khushbu is studying Biomedicine at Monash University and I’m doing Architecture at UQ, so it was hard to find a middle ground that related to our personal career interests. That’s why we decided we should support the many different causes that we’re passionate about collectively.”

And that they have. Isha and Khushbu set up Choose Your Cause during the year of the 'New Normal'. Their platform seeks to educate and empower the future generation about local and international issues, particularly those that impact youth. Their site features eight unique charities and gives visitors the opportunity to learn more about them, and donate, while they’re there.

The plan, the pair shared, is to build up a database of charities for young people to access—those that do meaningful work but don’t get the same level of publicity as big-name organisations. By working with schools, Isha and Khushbu hope to implement charitable action similar to that which they experienced during their time in the St Peters Service Learning program.

“We want adolescents to explore different causes; to educate themselves and their peers; and to empower themselves to speak up about the different causes and raise funds and awareness,” Isha explained. “Through our Youth Programme, we hope to give people the knowledge they need to take with them in their life and find their charitable passion.”

While there’s no set limit, Isha and Khushbu aim to add at least eight new charities to their website each year.

“Five-ten years down the line, we hope to have a whole repertoire of unique causes and organisations,” Khushbu said. “We want to be able to give all of them a platform to grow.”

When asked about the most testing part of establishing their organisation, Isha and Khushbu didn’t focus on their State separation, or the task of contacting their initial shortlist of organisations to be featured on their site (bar one very late night trying to make the time difference between Australia and Belgium work!). Instead, it was refining their idea that put up initial roadblocks.

“That’s what took us the most time,” Khushbu said. “We had to work on our idea until it was polished and made sense, not only to us, but to everyone around us.”

The distance, Isha added, actually worked really well in their favour.

“I have been able to establish contacts on the ground in Brisbane, and Khushbu has done the same with schools in Melbourne. What 2020 taught us was that everything is possible online!”

So where to now? Isha and Khushbu are currently working on encouraging the implementation of their Youth Programme in schools, all while completing their secondyear university studies and working various jobs. When asked about the juggle, they said St Peters gave them all the tools they need to succeed.

“In Year 12 we had a lot on our plate, but it taught us time-management,” Isha reflected. “That’s something we rely on now.”

Going forward, the pair are confident they can face any challenge they come up against.

“Nothing is impossible,” Khushbu said. “If you have the skills and experiences to back you up, and a good team to support you, you can make anything successful.”