Sachin Shiva
Dartmouth College
Sachin combines thoughtful leadership with a magnetic passion for the common good. He was a member of the inaugural cohort of Foundations in Social Impact, a first year leadership program merging values-driven reflection with a local nonprofit consulting project. Sachin was also a member of a Dartmouth Partners in Community Service cohort internship in Philadelphia where he served at Philabundance, a major hunger relief organization. There, he worked in dialogue with grocers in local communities to combat hunger in neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia via food rescue and messaging around its positive effects on the area and the people. Outside of the Dartmouth Center for Social Impact, Sachin has peppered his collegiate career with intensive cultural competency programming through the Rockefeller Center, taken academic courses that combine theoretical understanding with real world practice, and pursued conferences on service interests. Sachin’s focused study of political systems and how they are used to influence the lives of others dovetail into his Government major and Public Policy minor. As a result of his demonstrated thoughtfulness during these transformative experiences, Sachin was chosen to be the Student Director of Internships. Sachin is a true emerging leader who uses consistently uses social impact as his compass.
Personal Statement
Children have the wonderful gift of questioning why the world is the way it is. As a child, I often asked why some individuals had to beg on the street, while I had a roof over my head and food on the table. This was my first exposure to injustice. Over time, I developed a passion for interrogating what are accepted as givens – inequality, homelessness, war, and so on. I got involved with political campaigns to advocate for more just policies in our society. However, I knew I wanted to examine these injustices at the ground level. Therefore, I constructed an Eagle Scout project to provide 100 backpacks packed with winter supplies to homeless individuals in the Chicago area. When I got to Dartmouth, I immersed myself in an ethical leadership program, where I learned the importance of vulnerability and collaborative communication. Last summer, I worked with a food bank called Philabundance to increase food donations from grocery stores that were donating surplus food to the food bank. These experiences have shown me that we must continue to demand justice for disenfranchised individuals, and as children often do, we must not hesitate to change the givens in our society.
