About ProjectNBYOUTH

Project New Boundaries for Youth (ProjectNBYOUTH) is a youth driven leadership initiative aiming to spread awareness and inspire youth about local health, education, and environmental issues in their communities so that they can actively participate and work to bring about positive changes. We look to inspire youth leadership working towards a sustainable and healthy future for their communities.

ProjectNBYOUTH was founded in 2015 by Nidhi Bhaskar as a high school sophomore at MICDS in Saint Louis, Missouri. In 2021, Nidhi graduated from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, with Baccalaureate degrees in Health Policy, Anthropology, and Biology. Currently, Nidhi is pursuing MSc degree in Medical Anthropology at the University of Oxford in England, before starting medical school at Brown University in the fall of 2022. Her academic interests lie at the nexus of human rights, global health development, healthcare policy making, and youth leadership initiatives in community projects, both locally and internationally. She is drawn to researching methods where the youth can participate and contribute towards making their communities safer and healthier.

At Brown, Nidhi was the founder and Co-President of the Brown Effective Altruism Initiative active participant and a 2019 scholarship recipient of the PPE (Philosophy Politics and Economics) Society.  She is also the technical editor of the Global Emergency Medicine Literature Review at the Brown University Alpert Medical School.

In addition to her work as Founder and Leader of ProjectNBYOUTH, Nidhi pursued many leadership initiatives in local and international volunteering activities throughout her high school. Nidhi was the Co-founder and Co-head of Project Clean Surroundings Club at MICDS, which raised awareness about sustainability, effects of poor sanitation on health problems in developing countries, and promoted ways in which the youth at her school contributed to creating tangible changes towards that cause. In May 2015, the club organized a successful fund raising event and donated money to the 2015 Nepal earthquake victims. In February 2016, the club held another event to donate to victims of the Saint Louis flooding. The club also organized a meal packaging event in September 2016 and sent over 10,000 meals to people in developing countries.

Nidhi is a trained and certified teen first-responder and founded the MICDS Teen CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) club that offers high school students FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) approved emergency response training and empowers teens with lifelong readiness and first-response skills. She was as a member of the Saint Louis Children’s Hospital Youth Council and participated in local health awareness projects. She has volunteered in local hospitals in St. Louis, local soup kitchens, and also at the MICDS BJC Hospice Club. Nidhi received the 2016 President’s Volunteering Service Gold award from President Barack Obama.

Nidhi has pursued her passion for community service internationally since 2013. She volunteered at rural clinics in India in July 2013, where she saw first-hand the paucity of emergency medical services, poor sanitation, inadequate community awareness, and lack of solid infra-structure in distribution of resources, and was inspired to work towards these causes. In June 2015, Nidhi traveled to Peru(South America) as a part of a PAMS(Peruvian American Medical Society) learning and service trip to volunteer in rural clinics, orphanages, and local schools in Chincha, alongside American doctors and medical students.

Nidhi has participated in numerous leadership training programs across the United States including the Envisions Medical Leadership Forum in University of Illinois, Chicago in June 2014, and the leadership Institute for Global development at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island in June 2015, where she trained to critically assess factors that shape global development, interpreting development data, and apply critical thinking to planning and implementation of volunteering and leadership opportunities, both locally and abroad.

Nidhi is a recipient of Keds Brave life grant award that helped her launch the youth sanitation awareness project in Bangalore. Her mentors include Dr. Jacaranda van Rheenen, manager of the Global Health Center at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr.Chaya Gopalan, Professor of Health and Education from St. Louis, Ms. Diana Graizbord, faculty at Brown University, and Dr.Tanya Roth, faculty in History Department at MICDS. In October 2016, Nidhi received the Children’s Environmental Health Network’s Youth Leadership National Award at Washington, D.C.

Nidhi is inspired to promote youth driven community projects with the conviction that her work will impact the global community. Peer-influenced projects gain maximum momentum, especially in the youth. She values this opportunity as a platform to promote socially responsible leadership in youth across the world.