Two Indians are among 20 extraordinary young individuals, including social entrepreneurs, climate advocates, innovators, and community health champions from across the Commonwealth, have been shortlisted for the 2025 Commonwealth Youth Awards for Excellence in Development Work.
The top regional winners and the much-anticipated Commonwealth Young Person of the Year will be announced at a special ceremony on March 12, hosted by the Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland KC.
Baroness Scotland: “Our young people have shown genuine innovation and commitment in striving to make the Commonwealth fairer, more secure, more sustainable, and more prosperous. Their projects demonstrate the great potential of 1.7 billion young people across the Commonwealth.
“We are delighted to recognise, nurture, and support them by offering platforms like the Youth Awards to showcase their potential to the world.”
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The Commonwealth Youth Awards recognise the exceptional contributions of young people to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and enhancing development in their communities and beyond.
Smriti Bhaya
Area of work: SDG 3: Good health and wellbeing
Smriti Bhaya aims to revolutionise public maternal healthcare in India. She cofounded Sakhi, an AI-powered platform that provides personalised maternal health information in local languages while enabling NGOs to track impact through real-time analytics. In its first quarter, Sakhi served 150 rural Indian families, improving care compliance by 15 per cent and winning UNICEF’s Gender Innovation Challenge and awards from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Through partnerships with major Indian NGOs and CSRs, Sakhi aims to reach 25,000 women in 2025.
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Keyaan Shah
Area of work: SDG 10: Reduced inequalities
Keyaan Shah is a 16-year-old social innovator and founder of AbiliTec, an initiative addressing accessibility challenges for underserved persons with disabilities. His low-cost assistive technologies – SignKraft, SpeechKraft, SightKraft and Chirpies – support individuals with speech, hearing, visual and intellectual impairments, and have benefited more than 600 marginalised individuals by improving their communication and independence. His work has earned recognition from UNICEF, India’s Ministry of Science and Technology and global science fairs.
