Imagine you woke up from a rare dream on a fine Monday morning and as you woke up something amazing tuned on your ears– world’s poverty-free! Well, you will not believe and will try to rewind the voice that echoed recently on you. And imagine, as you are overruled by illusions, that this is a dream of a young Bhutanese graduate that turned into reality.
Bhuwan Giri, 18, is a Bhutanese youth resettled in Springfield, Massachusetts. He recalls that he was born in a refugee camp in Jhapa where everything was limited. Uncertainty was only the thing that was certain. Exactly like thousands of other kids, he was deprived of better education and opportunity. As he stepped into an age of thinking about his future, he cultivated a dream– in fact an abandoned dream–of becoming a software engineer.
The fathomlessness of the darkness rejected him dreaming high. The parents built a different world for their children. This was a world where the sky was limited and the fate predetermined. Bhuwan grew up playing scratched marbles and ragged football. He swam a number of times across fast flowing Timai river exactly like his peers did and secretly wished he could reborn in a place where he could transform his dream into reality.
Fortunately, he got resettled in the United States when he was still in his early teens. And with this he is in a position of making his dreams come true. He has already graduated with a GPA of 4.0 as an honors student from a science and technology school.
And now, Giri has started cultivating even higher and ambitious dream, the dream of eradicating poverty from the world!
The whole story started when one of his colleagues asked him what he could do if he could have received a book with information that could change his life. The colleague asked him what this hypothetical book could be like and what could the contents of the book be. And consequently something popped into his mind—Hope Box.
What is Hope Box? Giri says, “The Hope Box is a durable tablet that comes pre-loaded with educational contents such as basic survival information, language, basic math skills, technology, Wikipedia, music, inspirational content and a how to? feature.” The device will have the capacity to withstand severe conditions. Though it has built-in contents, it will be possible to connect to the inter net whenever it is available. It can be assigned to have a portable solar panel to ensure that it receives adequate power supply during the time of power cuts.
For Giri, education and access to information is the first step to sustainable change. He says, “Teaching somebody how to read and communicate, basic survival skills, learning about the world around them, and to aspire for greatness will make a substantial difference today and more importantly, will provide hope and inspiration for people to change their destinies.”
Giri believes that the technology giant like Google could help in materializing this dream. He opines that the idea of developing and distributing the “Hope!Box” to impoverished people around the globe would bring Google to a new height.
Giri seems to be too little concerned about implementation, result-oriented distribution and utilization of the product should the dream come true. But he strictly considers that the aid organizations that have been working to uplift the current marginalized and poverty-stricken global population can play a vital role in distributing this remedial product.
Bhuwan knows that the goal lies at a scary distance but he firmly stands that it has the potential to revolutionize the world the instant people have it in their hands.
Hope Box eradicating poverty, does this dream come true?
Watch an overview of the Hope Box Eradicating Poverty below:
