Kehkashan Basu

At only 20 years old, Kehkashan is already a global influencer, environmentalist, TEDx Speaker, social enterprise innovator and author. In 2012, she founded the Green Hope Foundation to provide a platform for engagement and empowerment of children and youth, especially those representing vulnerable groups, and turn them into changemakers who address the sustainability issues at a local level. Today, the foundation has 2060 members in 16 countries across the Middle East, India, Brazil, the USA, Canada, Europe and South-East Asia.

Empowering young people is Kehkashan's passion, and she spends a lot of time personally training and guiding many of them through workshops on mangrove conservation and tree planting. Kehkashan is a tireless civil society advocate for the Sustainable Development Goals and holds leadership positions in several organizations.During the COVID-19 pandemic, she continues her advocacy work through webinars and the #WomenImpactingTheWorld series. She is the winner of 2021 the “World Literacy Award for Significant Contribution to Literacy by a Youth”