These Students Have Hope — And a Plan
At a young age, Rahul and Karthik Chalumuri’s parents instilled in them the value of giving back. When they were just 5 years old, their parents brought them to a local soup kitchen to volunteer.
Their family’s community service continued over the years, volunteering with organizations such as the Monadnock United Way and Monadnock Center for Violence Prevention.
As Rahul and Karthik reached their senior year at Keene High School, they knew that they wanted to have a positive impact on their community before going to college.
So, the fraternal twins put their heads together and decided to create a service organization at Keene High School — Students for Hope. Their 18-person organization is dedicated to creating care packages for their local cancer center, Cheshire Medical Center’s Norris Cotton Cancer Center-Kingsbury Pavilion.
Along with their peers, Rahul and Karthik have now organized a number of successful donation drives to gather care package items for the Center, collecting everything from toothbrushes to adult coloring books. Rahul and Karthik reached out to friends, parents, business owners, and even local newspapers in an effort to bolster their donations. And, in large part due to the massive support from the Keene community, these drives have been more successful than the two young men ever imagined.
In fact, the drives have gone so well that Students for Hope is planning on holding another one this February around Valentine’s Day. Rahul and Karthik are also training younger students at Keene High School so that the organization can continue after the brothers graduate.
I am deeply impressed by Rahul and Karthik’s compassion and hard work — they truly exemplify New Hampshire’s all-hands-on-deck spirit. I am honored to name them as January’s Granite Staters of the Month, and I can’t wait to see all that they continue to do going forward.
Know an extraordinary Granite Stater you’d like to nominate? Visit my website here and tell me about them.
