Big or small, every action toward protecting our natural environment is invaluable to it’s long-term survival and well-being. Preserving our resources and ensuring the good health of our wildlife is largely a group effort, and there are inspiring leaders of all ages right in our own community. KPWB spoke to two avid volunteers from Prince William County, Anushka & Aashka Misra, about their incredible environmental work and what has pushed them to lead family and friends in their volunteer efforts.
Becoming Inspired
Anushka Misra, 8th grade, and Aashka Misra, 5th grade, are both from Prince William County and have had an interest in civic engagement for years. When they were younger, their mom encouraged them to display and share their artwork with the community. After raising so much money, they decided to donate their proceedings to St. Judes Children’s Hospital. The recognition they received from St. Judes for their donation felt really good and encouraged them to do more.
Once the pandemic occurred, the girls began to notice the litter around their community, including commonly tossed items, like aluminum cans, that can be recycled. With the help of their school, they started their own can recycling drive in order to raise awareness, and their funds were donated to a foster care project.
Their Recent Projects
To find their next volunteer project, Anushka & Aashka think about topics that interest them and their family and then do their research to discover related local opportunities. Recently, they considered the recyclability of crayons and the waxy mess they create after being tossed. Seeing as crayons contain paraffin wax (a petroleum by-product), they are not biodegradable and leave behind a harmful sludge in our landfills that takes decades to decompose. Anushka and Aashka were able to divert 370.37 lbs. of broken crayons from the landfill after bringing the community donations to Staples to have shipped to The Crayon Initiative. With the help of KPWB’s Eco-Ambassador program, they orchestrated this drive by connecting with local libraries to set up their many collection bins. The Crayon Initiative project receives these crayons, melts them down, and donates the new finished product to children’s hospitals. After such a success, these volunteers are hoping to put this community drive on year after year.
Anushka & Aashka also expanded their aluminum can drive this past year to do again with the help of Amanda Brown, KPWB staff member, after getting a lot of support from neighbors and friends. To grow the project, a collection bin was set up at the KPWB office, and Anushka became a member of the Eco-Ambassador program. Part of this program is the opportunity to host an educational session in the community. She quickly realized how much planning went into putting on an accessible, functional lesson for community members and got to work. Anushka hosted educational sessions on recycling at 3 different libraries and had nearly 30 young participants show up for every session. Practicing how to reach different ages in her teaching, how to truly connect ideas for kids of varying walks of life, was a huge learning experience for Anushka, one she has kept in mind ever since.
One of the girls’ latest projects has been over the value of recycling eyeglasses. Their plan was to connect with local eye doctors to ask about putting a collection bin in their office for used glasses. Through their research, Anushka and Aashka found out about the Lions Club Association, one of the largest service organizations in the world, and reached out to the local Woodbridge Lions Club. This organization is recognized for their service to the visually impaired and hearing impaired; they provide eye exams and eyeglasses, hearing exams/hearing aids, food baskets, scholarships, support for youth activities, drug abuse awareness programs, leader/hearing dogs for the visually/hearing impaired, etc. Seeing as eyeglasses can be very inaccessible in other countries, the Lions Club recycles used pairs to prepare them for children who need them across the world. From October 2024 to December 2024, Anushka and Aashka advertised their effort and collected nearly 150 pairs of eyeglasses from their community to donate.
Through these recent works, the girls were very grateful to their parents for their long-term support of this passion and to Amanda Brown from KPWB for helping them execute some of their ideas. Becoming so involved in their community and always looking for another way to help others really made them realize that “if we aren’t the people that make the change we want to see, then who’s going to make it? We have to be the change in whatever problems we see,” they said. “If we don’t change anything, then no one’s going to change anything.”
Anushka & Aashkas’ Favorite Ways to Give Back
Aside from the environment, these two volunteers have engaged with multiple sectors of our community. They’ve put on many fundraisers and penny drives to donate money to local nonprofits, donated children’s toys to Toys for Tots, and created birthday gift bags for foster care children. In addition to participating in local litter cleanups and labeling storm drains with educational notices, they’ve also volunteered their time at food pantries and labeled books for the Loudoun Literacy program. The girls are big animal lovers, and Aashka has also volunteered at animal rescue shelters by helping at their events, spending time with the animals, doing admin work, building dog toys and even baking dog treats. Anushka currently runs a small blog about environmental sustainability to help spread awareness about recycling our everyday products. Recycling might just be their favorite cause, but they both have enjoyed every one of these ventures and have gained a wide range of skills and experience from them.
Despite their hefty workload, Aashka loves to walk outside and her favorite part of the environment is seeing clean landscapes and planting flowers for the joy that their vivid colors bring her community; Anushka stated that her favorite part is how it feels to give back to the environment, to know that she can help teach others how to properly care for it, so that we may all continue to enjoy it. “We know about it, but when we spread our knowledge about it to others, that’s when we can create a bigger impact all together with people in our community.” For our future earth, they hope to see our planet thrive against pollution and exploitation, to continue to be green and not barren; furthermore, they would like to see our society take sustainability more seriously and more incorporated into our daily lives.
How Others Can Be Involved
Anushka and Aashka believe anyone can help serve their community, and that all it takes is a first step. Start with a question you have, they suggested, and see where it leads you. Find a problem in your community, and spend some time researching your local organizations to find the deeper cause. There are many people who may be wondering how to solve the same problem, and the girls believe that searching for them could be an opportunity to team up and fight it together, if you just ask. Research is an incredibly important tool and skill that anybody can learn from in community work. Anushka hopes to be a biomedical scientist in the future, where her research will have an even greater impact on the world.
Both girls say that “anybody can be a leader” as long as they’re willing to stand by their community. “I think a leader should be able to direct a community toward the greater good; a leader has to be approachable, open-minded, who isn’t afraid to stand out and use their voice to communicate their thoughts or issues that matter to them. They should be able to use their voice to make change, leaders should inspire people to follow them and make an impact on issues that matter to their community,” Anushka said. Aashka agreed, adding that, “Leaders should stick to what they believe is right, be patient and listen to other people’s ideas.”
KPWB looks forward to seeing what more these incredible, young community leaders will do for our world and what they will inspire in others as they pave this very impactful road for their generation. We could all stand to learn something from their work and insight!
