In this time of turmoil, some people get inspired to make a difference in their communities, counties, states and even nationally. Brothers Dhruv and Vansh Nanda, both high schoolers, launched a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization called, “Mission Tomorrow,” which has a goal of creating a better world in the future by improving the lives of people today. They do this by addressing basic needs, such as health, shelter, and education. They also concentrate on preserving natural resources for not only the present, but for future generations as well.
The brothers, along with some friends that served as volunteers, sprung to action when the winter blizzard came through DFW in February, organizing several water collection and distribution drives, with help from Dayspring Family Church Food Pantry in Irving.
“Over the past couple of years – actually our entire lives – because my parents are first generation to the United States of America from India, we get to go over to India about every three to four years,” said Dhruv. “Over there, we started becoming aware of the various issues where people were being denied the basic necessities of food and water, and I would also pay attention to the sustainability of the environment over there around New Delhi, which is the area we visit most often, and is ranked as the number one most polluted city in the world.”
“So, we would constantly see the effects where people’s lungs would sometimes get contaminated and stuff like that. And ever since we came to the United States, we kind of lived within a bubble,” Dhruv said. “We really didn’t understand or weren’t really aware that some of these situations were also prevalent over here. As we started maturing and started growing up, we realized how privileged we were compared to others within our area.”
“So, we started expanding outside of our bubble and, through this realization, we have always wanted to create our own organization to help combat these issues. The main reason for this is we believe that our personalities and what is really important to us could best be used through forming an organization, and we could have more flexibility with the goals we wanted to accomplish [as opposed to joining an existing entity].
“You’ve always heard the old saying that it’s best to start your own business and if you want something done right, do it yourself. We are very visible in terms of the decisions that we make. We don’t have to take in input from higher-ups or anything. We are able to operate how we’d like to so as to benefit the most people and communities,” said Dhruv.
“One major goal actually formed by accident, with the winter storm that happened in February. It was disturbing to see pictures of people’s houses getting flooded because of burst pipes and all that. So, that was one of the key motivators for us to start our ‘Water for Texas’ initiative. We started this initiative because we wanted to help people get access to clean drinking water, since pipes were getting repaired during this time, and sometimes people didn’t have a way just to go to the grocery store, and bottles of water were running out. I saw some of those at community recreation centers where people were throwing out buckets of water and just using the tap they had on the side [of the building]. I was like, ‘This isn’t sustainable,’” Dhruv said.
Mission Tomorrow is far from being out of goals for its future.
“I know I spoke a little bit about sustainability,” Dhruv said. “That’s something that really inspires and fuels our organization, so the next mission that we’re actually planning is focused on planting trees within the Dallas area.
“As we know, Dallas is getting very urbanized with many headquarters and many residential areas having to be built to accommodate the workforce. To make space for all of this land, there was a lot of deforestation happening within this area, so we kind of want to put these trees back to contribute positively to the sustainability of our environment.
“To give you some background [on partnerships for tree sustainability], we have been having discussions with some of the cities. I know we were focusing on the City of Irving and the City of Lancaster. We’ve been in touch with their city councils to help us identify areas that would most benefit from the planting of trees,” Dhruv said.
Dhruv’s brother, Vansh, gave his perspective on how Mission Tomorrow came into being and what the future holds for the organization.
“Initially when we started Mission Tomorrow, we were just focused on what we could provide for the community,” said Vansh. “But then the Texas winter storm came through and we saw a lot of need. Some of my friends’ houses got flooded and we saw how people didn’t have water because of burst pipes and things like that. So, we realized that there were so many people out of [usable] water and so we started contacting many, many different companies like Costco and Pepsi, and after that we contacted some of the food pantries and we started getting in the [bottled] water.”
“In the future, since my brother is managing most of this company, I was thinking that in the future, I’d do something more toward public policy to help the community. We could partner up to make a bigger positive impact,” Vansh said.
Dhruv agrees. Both brothers hope to inspire other young people to start making a difference in their communities.
“We’d like to inspire future generations to do some things to help their communities,” Dhruv said. “It always warms my heart to see young people following in our footsteps. We need more types of actions like this because it takes everyone as a community to help combat big issues.
“Right now, our organization is relatively small, and the events we’re doing are not as large in scope, but as we start going to this tree initiative, which is a much larger initiative, we will definitely need more support, and so our schools are the first places that we’re planning on going to secure this type of help, along with our friends on the city councils,” Dhruv said.
To learn more about Mission Tomorrow, visit MissionTomorrow.org/.
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