Jahaan Arora

When a school visit to an HIV+ home for young people opened his eyes to food insecurity, Jahaan was moved to launch a 100-day fundraiser to address the problem. That first fundraising project successfully fed 40 young people for three months, but it was only the beginning. Today, Jahaan’s initiative has grown into 1 Million Meals, a nationwide movement to provide food funding to vulnerable people. Since completing its first project, 1 Million Meals has won a $440,000 grant from The Aziz Premji Foundation to help 80 children with cerebral palsy or HIV/AIDS; all in all, it has succeeded in delivering 950,000 meals to Indian children as well as gaining the volunteer support of 7,500 students across 20 schools.

Jahaan is also the founder of $ocialCred$, a ground-breaking youth timebanking platform that empowers children to trade hours of community service for mentorship, skills, and collaborative civic action. Inspired by the UK Time Bank, Jahaan built the $ocialCred$ tech platform himself – and since its launch, 11,900 children across five countries have contributed 168,000 hours of social giving through 100+ different programmes, including food drives, environmental cleanups, and mental health projects. 

Jahaan has also created the flagship project Trash Mafia Kids, which educates communities to segregate waste. So far, Trash Mafia Kids has upcycled over 20 tonnes of dry waste, and aims to upcycle 100 tonnes by 2030. The initiative has donated 50,000+ clothes items, made 1,000 notebooks from note pages, upcycled 5,000 books and diverted 20 tonnes of waste from landfills through student-led recycling efforts. 

Jahaan’s work has gained wide recognition. He was appointed a Youth Ambassador for the UK Time Bank, awarded the Canon Young Champion of the Year, and has been a best practice speaker at the World Time Banking Conference for the last four years, where he has consistently shared his experience of how to create and launch a successful timebanking eco-system for children. Academically, Jahaan is a high-achieving student at The International School Bangalore, where he also launched the first $ocialCred$ after-school club. That initial 400-member school squad sparked civic action projects in 20 more schools. As co-founder of $ocialCred$, he has also been featured as a case study in the 4th World Time Bank Report.

Looking to the future, Jahaan plans to hit 1 million meals delivered before graduating and expand $ocialCred$ to 20,000 student users clocking 1 million hours of civic impact.