About Pure Hearts
Our Organisation
Dedicating oneself to the well-being of others embodies a pure heart! Pure Hearts is a youth-driven initiative with the support of adult volunteers, fostering deep community bonds for the betterment of humanity since 2014. We cherish compassion and sensitivity, nurturing an unwavering love to bring warmth and joy to distressed children and families facing challenging times. Our commitment lies in celebrating and nurturing lives, spreading cheer and community spirit to positively impact lives for the greater good.
Eager and passionate young individuals from schools in the NCR Gurugram region (including The Shri Ram School - Moulsari, Aravali, and Millennium campuses, The Heritage School, Scottish High International School, Pathways World Schools, DPS Schools, Kunskapsskolan, Lotus Valley School, Amity International School, and more) come together as a united force to empower those in need with their unique strengths and boundless compassion.
Pure Hearts, an 80G accredited organisation, is a children’s initiative that undertakes causes to help the underprivileged, the elderly, and any other social group in need of help at a given time due to unforeseen circumstances.
All Pure Hearts initiatives are a collective movement by children, supported by adult volunteers. Funds are raised through contributions mainly by the residents of Gurugram, through crowdfunding, and CSR funds from Corporations.
Pure Hearts works with many schools in Gurugram and supports other NGOs, government bodies, the Health Department of Gurugram and the medical fraternity, the Gurugram Administration, the MCG and the Gurugram Police.
With the support and guidance of adult volunteers, students from across Gurugram come out to volunteer for initiatives that are close to their heart. Each one of our on-ground activities is driven by enthusiastic, passionate students who come out to do their bit.
Our Mission
Our mission is to embrace social causes, build awareness and community support across a range of issues.
Leadership
Shalu Johar Sahni
President
Sanjay Gupta
Treasurer
Navita Sharma
Operations
Poonam Agrawal
Project Incharge – Meri Pehchan
Inderbir Thussu
Academic Head
Radha Bhugra
Curriculum Leader & Head HG 2
Divya Kakkar
Educator
Deepa Jose
Educator & Head HG 1
Kanwal Singh
Admin Lead
Nivedita Rathore
Advisor
Ashu Jain
Advisor
Dipthi Ambedkar
Advisor
Nitin Sahni
Advisor
Vivek Vats
Legal Counsel
Founding Volunteers
Varun Sahni
At 4 or 5 years old, I recall feeling happy to feed the homeless and visiting a blind school every year to pay homage to my late grandmother. My journey towards founding Pure Hearts began when I was just 6 years old when there were floods in the state of Jammu Kashmir. I got the opportunity to use my ‘little’ strength to play the piano at a neighboring residential community to raise funds and support for the flood victims. The encouraging words from the audience and one of India’s leading daily news platform publishing my photograph was indeed very motivating, and it ignited a spark within me to do support the greater good and help lives in distress.
Together with my elder brother and four friends from our own resident community, we embarked on a mission to embrace various social causes. We gathered a group of approximately 15 children to participate — adding our strengths and efforts to conceptualize another fundraiser around Diwali for children battling cancer, raising INR 200K for not-for-profit CanKids for the treatment of 6 children.
This experience allowed us to express ourselves, come together as one family, and most importantly derive immense satisfaction from knowing that we all contributed our time to a meaningful cause.
The energy and motivation derived from this endeavor eventually led to the establishment of Pure Hearts, our very own non-profit organization in 2015. At Pure Hearts, we aspire to provide a platform where more and more children who can come together to support those in need.
Over the years, over 1,000 children have volunteered for various causes that Pure Hearts undertakes. Children volunteering with Pure Hearts are encouraged to conceptualize and lead initiatives that are close to their heart, and we make all efforts to provide them the support and environment they need to express themselves. The initiative has grown to see participation from 12 prominent schools in Gurugram and Delhi.
Nitish Sahni
I began my journey into community service with a group of children called Pure Hearts. It’s a children’s initiative where we embrace various causes such as raising funds for underprivileged children diagnosed with cancer, raising awareness on autism, putting up fundraisers for the critically illed and so on and so forth.
At Pure Hearts, I came to notice that with so many children, all are willing to work for different causes: the causes they love. For example, some would want to work for cancer patients, some for animal care, some for the environment etc. And so I noticed that we spend plenty of time on deciding on a particular cause to embrace.
So with Pure Hearts, helping and comforting the sick has been weaved into my life and I hope to continue to work for it. I recently graduated from UC Berkeley, where I studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. At Berkeley, I was part of the Cognitive Neuroanatomy Lab where I researched brain imaging for different neuro-types.
Samarth Jain
It’s been 10 years since my first sewa with Pure Hearts. For me, it was always my upbringing — my mother always ensured that we know how lucky and privileged we are, and to be grateful for everything we take for granted such as clean water or proper food. Those 2 resources alone put us in a better condition than 90% of the world. That’s quite a stark number and a perspective!
In addition to how my mother raised me, I am grateful for the upbringing in my neighborhood — with you aunty, and the others in Pure Hearts, who made a 15 year old immature boy realize how important it is to give back to the society.
Now I’m 26, and I have done 1% of what I can possibly do to help even a single life with my sewa physically, but I want to contribute by donating 10K INR out of my salary per month to improve lives around us.
Maadhav Veer Singh
I am Maadhav Veer Singh, an undergrad from Tulane University in the US with a double major in Finance and Management. I’m a finance professional working in venture capital, investing in impact driven startups across multiple sectors.
Having founded Pure Hearts more than 9 years ago, I’ve had some incredible experiences working with the organization. I’m grateful for all the opportunities Pure Hearts gave me to connect with and serve people from different backgrounds. My heartiest of memories include going to underprivileged schools and performing theatrical plays for them, interacting with the kids, and playing games with them. I was nothing but humbled by the sheer magnitude of affection people gave me for the smallest acts of service.
Sanya Malik
Sanya is not only the co-founder but also an integral part of the Pure Hearts team. Sanya’s passion, dedication and will motivates me to do better but also help inspire those around her. Sanya has helped bring various drives into action including the autism awareness campaign ‘Sapno Ki Udaan’ a cause that is very close to her heart, which was started in 2017 and has since become an important annual campaign, with visits to Vishwas school for differently abled underprivileged children and awareness campaigns at various hotspots across Gurgaon.
Sanya is now at Parson’s, studying Art & Design and spreading cheer in her community.
