Desi Today Magazine
By Desi Today News Desk
Meet 14 year old girl from Surrey, who raises funds for various causes to support the community at the time of crisis
The beginning of Covid 19 crisis pushed everyone into an unexpected lockdown. While frontline workers were super busy serving the community, those in isolation were standstill wondering how to make best of the available time. Some picked up their forgotten hobbies, some learned new skills and there were few who came out to help those helping the community.
Meet Tavisha Kochhar, a grade 10 student at Sullivan Heights Secondary, who made 100s of reusable facemasks at a time when there were none available in the market. She sold these masks to raise funds for various organizations like Surrey Memorial Hospital, BC Children, Hospital St.Paul’s Hospital, Vancouver General Hospital and UBC Foundation.
According to the Surrey school district, Tavisha made nearly 600 cloth masks and raised $4,000 for several Lower Mainland hospitals in an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and increase funding for vaccine research.
She started sewing masks about four months ago, inspired by an innate interest in helping others and wanting to make masks more accessible for those who need them. She sells them through her website, https://www.tavishahelpinghands.com/ and ships orders across Canada and the U.S.
Her work was personally acknowledged by the defence minister HarjitSajjan. In one of his Tweets he said, “Youth like #TavishaKochhar show Canadians that we all have a part to play in helping our community go through #COVID19 safely. Tavisha has been making masks & selling them to raise over $1500 for frontline workers! Thank you for your compassion & kindness.”
Tavisha’spassion to raise funds to help community is not recent. Her journey of charitable work started when she was 11 years old and was in grade 6. She was moved to see the 2017 BC wildfires. “I decided to undertake a fundraising drive,” Tavisha said. She could contribute over $850 to the Canadian Red Cross. She continues to donate money during winter months through her fundraising activities. In 2018 she donated to BC Children’s Hospital through radiothon of Spice Radio 1200 AM. She collected the amount by selling bottle depot stuff and added her pocket money as well. She then planned to sell beer and liquor bottles by decorating and painting as vases and also donated to BC Cancer Foundation, Vancouver.
She says the desire to help others was instilled in her by her family that moved to Canada from India in 2011.
“They were always helping people,” she said. “Then we came here and my parents helped many people settle, even though they were not fully settled.”
“Now with the pandemic, I decided I would make masks affordable because I’ve seen online that many people were selling masks for unreasonable prices and it was just so unfair to the people who don’t have jobs anymore and lost family members.”
In Grade 8, Kochhar took a textiles course, where she learned to sew. Now she has put those skills to use in her living room, sewing masks by the hundreds.
In addition to affordability, philanthropy and stopping the virus’s spread, climate change is important to Kochhar, and making reusable masks aligned with her environmental consciousness.
“The environment is a really big issue,” she said. “If we’re able to make reusable masks that you could wash and keep clean for longer, it’s just so much better for the environment.”
To date, Kochhar has raised funds for Surrey Memorial Hospital, B.C. Children’s Hospital, St. Paul’s Hospital and Vancouver General Hospital for healthcare workers and COVID-19 research. She said the outpouring of community support has been a welcome surprise.
“I thought many people were going to go to other people for masks but they came to me, and I was very thankful for that.”
Becel Canada has approached her to make masks for them which they want to donate in Quebec She has made 200 masks for Becel Canada.
To order a mask, visit tavishashelpinghands.com
