Sonia Gupta
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Sonia Gupta grew up in a very Indian household. She remembers watching Bollywood movies, eating Indian food, and generally romanticizing India while growing up. Then, when she was in the fifth grade, she actually went to India for the first time. She thought it would be just like America, only with the Taj Mahal, beautiful landscapes and people wearing gorgeous outfits, and was shocked when she saw that it was not all that she had built it up to be: there were problems- serious problems- facing the people that she saw there. From that trip, she was inspired to make a difference in the world: to somehow help create a world that was more Taj Mahal and beautiful landscapes than the suffering and misfortune that had shocked her.
Her first inclination was to get involved in politics: Sonia pursued student government very heavily in high school and continued to do so when she got to Yale University, from where she graduated in the spring of 2011. In the summer after her freshman year, Sonia returned to India and conducted healthcare availability field research in Sunam, a poor rural village in India. She interviewed patients and hospital personnel to learn their views on HIV/AIDS, and came to see the huge web of misconceptions that existed and the way that corruption stopped money from going to clinics where it was desperately needed. She saw how it was necessary to charge for pills to convince the villagers that they had any value, when they could have been distributed for free , and came to understand the situation on the ground and the stories of these people.
Once Sonia returned from her trip, she realized that after doing all of this research, she now wanted to actually do something about it. “I didn’t think that undergrads who wanted to make a difference should have to wait a minimum of 8 years to make a difference until they get a medical degree,” says Gupta. So she started the organization now called UAID, United Against Infectious Diseases. Initially, she called the group AIDS Brigades, and posted a flyer in the center for community service on campus, trying to attract interest from other students who wanted to be part of the executive committee for this newly formed group. She may have started small, but Gupta had a big vision. “I knew that 10 years from now, I would love UAID to be on 50 campuses and in 10 countries”, she says. She had a dream, and through hard work and dedication, her dream is coming closer and closer to becoming a reality. There are currently 11 chapters of UAID at colleges across America- at Columbia, Fordham, NYU, Princeton, Rutgers, Cal Riverside, Chicago, Michigan, Yale, and the College of William and Mary.
Sonia chose to devote herself to fighting infectious diseases because she understands that such diseases are extremely preventable. “ Infectious diseases, if you take the right precautions, they’re 100% preventable, whereas you can’t predict when accidents will happen”, she says.
At the core of UAID’s mission is Gupta’s idea that there is no better way to teach others about how to help out then getting out into the world in person: no textbook can teach you like life experience. Two summers ago, UAID had its first trip, taking 25 students from 6 different schools to Panama. They partnered with the Ministry of Health, and conducted HIV testing and counseling for about 560 students and villagers. They had an agreement in place with the Ministry of Health that the government would take over and provide care for anyone who tested positive. Gupta’s most vivid memory is of an 87 year old man, who circled the entire village over and over again, going door to door making sure everyone came to get tested, and then came up to the group, showed them pictures of himself when he was 16 years old and a national boxing champion, and said in Spanish that there were no words in his language to express his gratitude. Gupta says that “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier, to see this idea turn into something practical that was actually saving lives.”
From this first trip to Panama, UAID expanded and next sent out trips to Sierra Leone, where students trained community health workers in smartphone software programs, which helped community health workers triage patients to identify who had HIV, malaria, and other diseases and take them to the main clinic nearby. This coming summer, UAID will also run a trip to South Africa, partnering with a grassroots soccer organization to hold soccer tournaments where they will teach about infectious diseases.
Gupta believes that an important success of UAID is that the organization has been able to steer away from the typical vision of what HIV/AIDS is. “When you search HIV/AIDS on Youtube, a lot of the videos you get are black and white images of really sad starving children and sad music and ominous facts on the screen. We’re trying to move away from that and make it more optimistic and relatable and positive. You don’t have to guilt trip people to make a difference. You make a difference because you can, and it makes you happy.”
So how does Gupta do it? How did she manage to found and run this visionary and inspiring organization while balancing the demands of school? She concedes that “the honest answer is that I never slept.” She was passionate about her idea, and she admits that she put it before most other parts of her life, often including her social life and academic achievement. She describes the basic principle behind her vision as attractive to the people they want to help, the foreign governments, and the students who make up the UAID body, making it, in Gupta’s words, a “win-win-win on all fronts.” Gupta holds that the greatest key to success is believing in yourself. She echoes Oprah’s mantra, “Fake it till you make it”, saying that if you don’t believe in yourself, you can’t expect anyone else to, so you had better know-or at least pretend- that what you stand for is the most important thing in the world to you and should be to others as well. Gupta has always believed in herself. And slowly, more and more people are coming to believe in her vision as well.
Gupta thinks that “It’s not enough to be concerned only about our immediate surroundings.” In UAID, she has managed to assemble a dedicated group of young people who stand by this idea. When people see what she and her organization have done, she thinks they are often so happy to see “that students of our generation are being so active in a world where it’s so easy to get lost in self-serving means- whether it’s wanting to get the new, elitist iPhone, getting the latest fashion, or going to a party.”
Gupta is currently living in Seattle, researching at Harborview Medical Center and Seattle Children’s Hospital , and hopes to one day attend medical school. But UAID will continue to be an important part of her life for as long as possible. She isn’t shy in outlining her long-term commitment to the organization that she has founded and believes in so strongly. “UAID is my life’s work”, she says. I hope to be involved in it for as long as I’m alive.”
Sonia Gupta grew up in a very Indian household. She remembers watching Bollywood movies, eating Indian food, and generally romanticizing India while growing up. Then, when she was in the fifth grade, she actually went to India for the first time. She thought it would be just like America, only with the Taj Mahal, beautiful landscapes and people wearing gorgeous outfits, and was shocked when she saw that it was not all that she had built it up to be: there were problems- serious problems- facing the people that she saw there. From that trip, she was inspired to make a difference in the world: to somehow help create a world that was more Taj Mahal and beautiful landscapes than the suffering and misfortune that had shocked her.
Her first inclination was to get involved in politics: Sonia pursued student government very heavily in high school and continued to do so when she got to Yale University, from where she graduated in the spring of 2011. In the summer after her freshman year, Sonia returned to India and conducted healthcare availability field research in Sunam, a poor rural village in India. She interviewed patients and hospital personnel to learn their views on HIV/AIDS, and came to see the huge web of misconceptions that existed and the way that corruption stopped money from going to clinics where it was desperately needed. She saw how it was necessary to charge for pills to convince the villagers that they had any value, when they could have been distributed for free , and came to understand the situation on the ground and the stories of these people.
Once Sonia returned from her trip, she realized that after doing all of this research, she now wanted to actually do something about it. “I didn’t think that undergrads who wanted to make a difference should have to wait a minimum of 8 years to make a difference until they get a medical degree,” says Gupta. So she started the organization now called UAID, United Against Infectious Diseases. Initially, she called the group AIDS Brigades, and posted a flyer in the center for community service on campus, trying to attract interest from other students who wanted to be part of the executive committee for this newly formed group. She may have started small, but Gupta had a big vision. “I knew that 10 years from now, I would love UAID to be on 50 campuses and in 10 countries”, she says. She had a dream, and through hard work and dedication, her dream is coming closer and closer to becoming a reality. There are currently 11 chapters of UAID at colleges across America- at Columbia, Fordham, NYU, Princeton, Rutgers, Cal Riverside, Chicago, Michigan, Yale, and the College of William and Mary.
Sonia chose to devote herself to fighting infectious diseases because she understands that such diseases are extremely preventable. “ Infectious diseases, if you take the right precautions, they’re 100% preventable, whereas you can’t predict when accidents will happen”, she says.
At the core of UAID’s mission is Gupta’s idea that there is no better way to teach others about how to help out then getting out into the world in person: no textbook can teach you like life experience. Two summers ago, UAID had its first trip, taking 25 students from 6 different schools to Panama. They partnered with the Ministry of Health, and conducted HIV testing and counseling for about 560 students and villagers. They had an agreement in place with the Ministry of Health that the government would take over and provide care for anyone who tested positive. Gupta’s most vivid memory is of an 87 year old man, who circled the entire village over and over again, going door to door making sure everyone came to get tested, and then came up to the group, showed them pictures of himself when he was 16 years old and a national boxing champion, and said in Spanish that there were no words in his language to express his gratitude. Gupta says that “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier, to see this idea turn into something practical that was actually saving lives.”
From this first trip to Panama, UAID expanded and next sent out trips to Sierra Leone, where students trained community health workers in smartphone software programs, which helped community health workers triage patients to identify who had HIV, malaria, and other diseases and take them to the main clinic nearby. This coming summer, UAID will also run a trip to South Africa, partnering with a grassroots soccer organization to hold soccer tournaments where they will teach about infectious diseases.
Gupta believes that an important success of UAID is that the organization has been able to steer away from the typical vision of what HIV/AIDS is. “When you search HIV/AIDS on Youtube, a lot of the videos you get are black and white images of really sad starving children and sad music and ominous facts on the screen. We’re trying to move away from that and make it more optimistic and relatable and positive. You don’t have to guilt trip people to make a difference. You make a difference because you can, and it makes you happy.”
So how does Gupta do it? How did she manage to found and run this visionary and inspiring organization while balancing the demands of school? She concedes that “the honest answer is that I never slept.” She was passionate about her idea, and she admits that she put it before most other parts of her life, often including her social life and academic achievement. She describes the basic principle behind her vision as attractive to the people they want to help, the foreign governments, and the students who make up the UAID body, making it, in Gupta’s words, a “win-win-win on all fronts.” Gupta holds that the greatest key to success is believing in yourself. She echoes Oprah’s mantra, “Fake it till you make it”, saying that if you don’t believe in yourself, you can’t expect anyone else to, so you had better know-or at least pretend- that what you stand for is the most important thing in the world to you and should be to others as well. Gupta has always believed in herself. And slowly, more and more people are coming to believe in her vision as well.
Gupta thinks that “It’s not enough to be concerned only about our immediate surroundings.” In UAID, she has managed to assemble a dedicated group of young people who stand by this idea. When people see what she and her organization have done, she thinks they are often so happy to see “that students of our generation are being so active in a world where it’s so easy to get lost in self-serving means- whether it’s wanting to get the new, elitist iPhone, getting the latest fashion, or going to a party.”
Gupta is currently living in Seattle, researching at Harborview Medical Center and Seattle Children’s Hospital , and hopes to one day attend medical school. But UAID will continue to be an important part of her life for as long as possible. She isn’t shy in outlining her long-term commitment to the organization that she has founded and believes in so strongly. “UAID is my life’s work”, she says. I hope to be involved in it for as long as I’m alive.”