Chief Graphic Design Officer-Simran Padney

 Hi! I'm Simran Pandey and I'm currently a sophomore at Amador Valley High School. Passionate about advocacy and social causes, I am extremely outspoken about health equity and have been fortunate enough to have been able to actively engage in these issues. Apart from volunteering with an civic, international-based non-profit and participating closely in district-level leadership, I have also worked with a team to design a campaign that highlights the disparity of levels of adequate healthcare for Asians and Pacific Islanders. An incredibly extroverted and goofy person, I hope to reach out to the youth of everywhere to make a lasting impact on them.  

With Youth Health Focus, I hope to further the level of engagement when it comes to students and teens being involved in health and fitness-related extracurriculars. Through social media specifically, I hope to increase levels of engagement through newer initiatives while also creating fun infographics so that people can digest new information. I also hope to use my networking skills to help branch Youth Health Focus out, hopefully increasing its impact to an international one.  

The Youth Health Focus non-profit organization was founded by Patrick and Wilson Ting in 2018 with a goal of making awareness of public health issues to kids in our community. Both of us aspire to reach our goal of internationally promoting healthy lifestyles and awareness bit by bit each and every day.

In the summer of 2018, Wilson and I participated in an international youth volunteer trip for which we traveled to some of the most rural parts of Kenya for 21 days led by the Me to We Non-Profit Organization. When we landed at the Jomo Kenyatta Airport, I saw many things that have left me in shock ever since. When we visited a school called Olorien in Rural Kenya, some of the children there were devoid of basic human necessities to live a healthy life. For example, just by seeing the children’s teeth having brown-yellow stains, I knew that there was a big problem with their water supply. What I also noticed were the poor quality shoes on their feet. Being the curious person I was, I walked over to a small boy named Amos. I chatted with him for a good 10 minutes to get to know him. During those 10 precious minutes, I asked him about his shoes, and why they were in that kind of condition. Amos replied with a simple answer. He told me that he had to walk many kilometers to either get water from a river or to walk to school. This was hard for me to imagine being from the developed country of The United States of America where most of the people either own cars or have access to the convenient public transportation system. The final aspect that the local Kenyan school children had in common was the fact that they were all malnourished. With skinny and underdeveloped bodies, I knew that not only was a commute to a water source or to school a long way, but also their commute to food. Their source of healthy food is scarce and the young children are lacking the nutrition. Back in America, I knew well that I can easily find a fast food restaurant at every corner of the street, but now looking at the poor condition of Kenyans, I chastised myself for every grain of rice that I have left in my bowl when I was younger. These experiences intrigue me to start a nonprofit organization to focus on educating youth on some of the most important health topics to promote healthy lifestyles in my community. To achieve this goal, we knew that we would have to start small. For now, we would like to focus on addressing the four most important topics, which are Sun Protection, CPR mastery, HPV Immunization, and Bone Marrow Registration. We believe that youth and adult alike should be made aware the importance of these four topics and the impact they have to promote a good, healthy lifestyle for all.