Asavari Agrawal believes opportunity shouldn’t depend on where you’re born. Before turning 18, the founder of Shape the Future had already raised ₹2,10,000 for children with cancer, brought Bharatanatyam and piano into the lives of underprivileged children, and launched a free online learning platform for students everywhere. Today she leads a community of 100+ volunteers, turning weekend hours into lasting impact.
Asavari Agrawal, founder of Shape the Future: I Started This When I Was Still a Baby Myself
There is a small girl at Thayi Mane Residential School in Bengaluru who calls Asavari Agrawal Amma.
Not as a joke. Not as a nickname she picked up casually. She calls her Amma the way a child calls someone who has been there, every single week, without fail, for years. The way a child calls someone who shows up even when life gives every reason not to.
Asavari is 17 years old. She has been doing this since the age of 13. And the story of Asavari’s Shape the Future matters not because it is extraordinary, but because it started in the most ordinary way possible. With a mother who almost did not have her. And a child who had no idea what she was walking into.
Where It All Began
Asavari is an IVF baby. Her mother went through great difficulty before she finally had her, and Asavari grew up with the quiet understanding that she had been fought for long before she was born. That shaped her more than she can explain.
When she was little, her mother began volunteering at Karuna Shreya, a hospice in Bengaluru. She had been through a painful loss and a doctor, while she was still recovering, asked her simply: when you get better, will you come somewhere with me? That somewhere changed her life. She found people carrying far heavier burdens than her own and she never complained again. She took Asavari along on her visits.
Asavari had no idea what was happening. She did not know the people they visited were dying. She just played, danced, laughed, and sat with them. But something was being quietly planted in her that she would not understand for years.
Her mother also started taking Asavari to Thayi Mane, a home for 150 orphaned and destitute children. For young Asavari, this was pure joy. So many children to play with. So many games. But she was growing up. And as she grew, she began to see what she could not unsee.
A Life That Was Already Full
By the time Asavari was in middle school at Inventure Academy in Bengaluru, she was living three lives at once. She was a national-level table tennis player. She had been learning Bharatanatyam since the age of five under Smt. Kanya Ramachandran at Natyapriya. And she was working toward a Grade 8 Piano diploma from Trinity College London.
Inventure Academy is not a school that tells you who to be. Empathy is one of its founding values, woven into everything from how teachers speak to students to how students are encouraged to look beyond themselves. It shaped Asavari in ways she did not notice until much later. The school gave her the freedom to pursue everything she loved and then quietly pointed her outward. Toward the world. Toward other people. Toward the question of what Asavari’s Shape the Future could actually do with all of this.
She chose Cambridge A Levels in Accounting, Economics, Business, Mathematics and English. Not because they looked impressive. Because she grew up watching her mother run Via Milano, multiple Times Food Award- winning restaurant, without formal business training. She watched the cost of that gap. She decided she wanted the knowledge her mother never had.
She also became the School Beyond Academic Captain of the Student Council, one of the three most prominent student leadership positions at Inventure, selected through student voting and a jury interview. She ran school productions, events, festivals, and a programme where they taught English to the school bus helpers. Because education belongs to everyone. Not just the people in the classrooms.
The Turn
In 2023, she completed her Bharatanatyam Arangetram at the age of 14. For most young dancers, this evening is a celebration. A moment to receive gifts and love.
She asked for something different.
She had recently met Uma Aunty from the Cuddles Foundation, a charity providing nutrition to children fighting cancer at government hospitals. The moment she told Asavari what those children were going through, she could not accept a gift for herself knowing they existed. So she asked every guest to donate instead.
That evening raised Rs 1,80,000.
Asavari has not stopped since. Through bake sales, lemonade stands, craft sales and tournament prize money, she has raised and donated a further Rs 30,000, bringing her total to Rs 2,10,000 for Cuddles. All of it, one drive at a time.
Shape the Future
As Asavari Agrawal grew older and began to truly understand the children at Thayi Mane, something inside her shifted. These were not just playmates. These were children who had been denied so many opportunities. And the gap between their lives and hers, same city. same sky. completely different worlds, was something Asavari’s Shape the Future was built to address.
So she began teaching. She asked Natyapriya if she could teach Bharatanatyam to underprivileged children. She asked MusikRoots if she could teach piano as part of their free programme. She set up a table tennis academy at Thayi Mane with her own equipment.
Then one Saturday during training, she noticed some of the girls were uncomfortable. Were on their periods and had no access to menstrual products. It broke her heart. She pledged monthly pad drives from that day. Not one has been missed since 2022. Then she noticed dental hygiene problems, so she called Dr. Prem and they organised a dental camp. Then eye problems, so they partnered with iDrishti Eye Hospital for a free screening camp. Then she realised these children had very limited access to basic knowledge, the kind she was getting every day in her A Level classroom.
So Asavari and her peers built a free online learning platform. Like Coursera, but for them. They created modules on Economics, Accounting, Business, Money Management, Law and Indian Politics. They tested everything by one benchmark: if her Nani could understand it, it was ready. Her Nani learned from the platform. That was the pass mark.
She called it Asavari’s Shape the Future. And it grew not because she planned it but because the work was real and people could feel that. One hand held another and another until they had more than 100 volunteers showing up every single weekend.
Together they have run 15 documented drives. A 170-kilogram e-waste collection drive with Saahas and Hulladek, earning a nomination for the Planet Healer Award 2025. Over 2,000 books collected to build the first library at Mullur Colony Government School. Free eye camps that served 50 children. Free health camps with CuroLive Care serving 56 children. A fitness camp led by ace trainer Rajan for 38 children, with 42 bags donated by Mrs. Deepti Bhalla. Clothing drives with Mini Klub. Backpacks from Wildcraft. School supplies from Milton. Dental products from Oral-B.
And the number that means more to Asavari than any of those: since they began their weekend sessions at Mullur Colony Government School, student enrollment has increased from 26 to 38. Parents are sending their children to school because they know someone is showing up for them. That is not a statistic. That is proof.
The Struggle Nobody Talks About
Ask Asavari what her biggest struggle is and she will not say money. She will not say time, though she has less of it than most teenagers she knows. She will say something that might surprise you.
Finding people who stay.
Social work in India, Asavari has observed with a sadness beyond her years, often looks like a costume people wear until it stops being useful. Volunteers come for a month, collect their certificates, add it to a college application, and disappear. The children, who have attached themselves to those faces and voices and presences, are left wondering where they went.
Asavari Agrawal has watched this happen too many times. She has seen the confusion on the faces of children who cannot understand why someone stopped coming. And she has made a decision so quietly and so firmly that it barely sounds like a decision at all. She will not be one of those people.
But none of that is what Asavari is most proud of.
She is most proud of the Saturday mornings. She is most proud of the children who run toward her when she arrives. She is most proud of the girl who calls her Amma, who does not know yet that she will have to leave, and whom she is determined never to let feel abandoned.
One Last Thing
If you are reading this and you have ever thought about doing something for the children in your city, Asavari’s Shape the Future has one thing to say to you. Not ten. Just one.
Stay.
Find ten children. Any ten. Show up for them next Saturday. And the Saturday after that. And the one after that. Do not leave when it gets hard. Do not leave when you get busy. Do not leave when the novelty wears off, because it will wear off. what remains is the only thing that ever mattered: a child who knows that someone is coming back for them.
