A student-led Service as Action initiative from our IB Middle Years Programme is one of 110 projects selected worldwide by the International Baccalaureate — recognising two years of work reclaiming discarded notebooks and reaching children across the Nilgiris.
A win for student-led action
Good Shepherd International School is proud to share that Project Śhikshā — a student-led initiative from our IB Middle Years Programme — has been selected as a winner of the 2026 Global Youth Action Fund (GYAF) by the International Baccalaureate.
The GYAF is one of the largest youth grant programmes in the world, run under the IB’s Festival of Hope initiative. This year, the Fund received more than 3,000 applications from young changemakers around the world. Only 110 projects were selected — a global cohort representing 324 young people from over 42 countries. Project Śhikshā is one of them.
The selection brings a grant of up to US$3,000 along with a year of structured IB programming, mentorship, and peer collaboration running from June to December 2026.
What is Project Śhikshā?
Śhikshā — which means “education” in Sanskrit — was conceived and delivered by our MYP students as a Service as Action project. The idea is simple but powerful. Every year, schools discard notebooks in which 80 to 90 per cent of the pages remain unused. At the same time, many children in tribal and underprivileged schools across the Nilgiris go without the most basic stationery. Śhikshā bridges these two realities.
The student team collects unused pages from discarded notebooks, rebinds them into fresh, usable books, and delivers them to children who need them most. In two years, Śhikshā has already produced and donated 1,400 rebound notebooks to tribal schools across the region — reducing paper waste and opening doors to learning at the same time.
The project aligns directly with two of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals — SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) — and embodies the IB learner profile in action: caring, principled, reflective, and committed to service.
The student team
Śhikshā is carried forward by a student-led, intergenerational team from our IB Middle Years Programme:
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Rudransh Vivek Gandhi (MYP4),
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Aradhana Muralikrishnan (MYP5),
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Anav Singh Bhatia (MYP4),
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Shaan Sakhiya (MYP3), and
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Shaan Sakhiya(MYP3)
The team deliberately bridges multiple MYP year groups so that leadership and institutional knowledge pass smoothly from senior students to juniors, ensuring the project continues long after the founders have graduated. This intergenerational handover is, in many ways, as much a part of the project as the notebooks themselves.
What the GYAF grant will make possible
Until now, every notebook produced by Śhikshā has been bound manually — a slow process that limits how many children the team can reach. The GYAF grant will fund the team’s transition to a semi-automated, plastic-free, glue-based binding system, with a professional binding machine, a precision paper-cutting machine, and a year’s supply of EVA glue.
The numbers tell the story:
- Current manual output: around 700 notebooks per year
- Projected output with the new equipment: 2,500+ notebooks per year
- Estimated increase in coverage of targeted students in the Nilgiris: from 16.7% to 83%
- Estimated increase in children reached: 70% more
The new system is also fully plastic-free, reinforcing the project’s core environmental commitment.
A global moment, rooted in the Nilgiris
Being one of 110 projects selected from more than 3,000 applications is a meaningful acknowledgement of the work our students have put in over the last two years. But the team is quick to point out that the win is not an ending — it is an invitation. Over the coming months, they will participate in IB-led programming with young changemakers from more than 42 countries, sharing strategies, building skills, and holding one another accountable to the work.
We are deeply proud of what our students have built, and of what their work says about the kind of learners an IB education is designed to nurture: curious, principled, globally minded, and committed to acting on what they care about.
Congratulations, Team Śhikshā. The Nilgiris — and now, the wider GYAF community — is watching with pride.
About the IB Global Youth Action Fund
The Global Youth Action Fund (GYAF) is an annual programme run by the International Baccalaureate that provides grants, mentorship, and structured programming to young people aged 12 to 19 who are taking action on community challenges. GYAF is open to all youth globally, regardless of IB affiliation, and is part of the IB’s Festival of Hope — a year-round initiative recognising youth-led contributions to community wellbeing. Learn more at ibo.org/festival-of-hope.
