Shwetha Sridharan started her life in this world as a migrant.  When she was a few months old, she moved to Zambia, Africa with her family as part of the migration of Indians into African countries. The first 7 years of her life, which she later came to know, were filled with community, racial realities, bonding, and exploration.

When Shwetha moved to the United States at age 7, her mother would frequently take her to volunteer events, encouraging her and her brothers to volunteer during holidays. By the time Shwetha was an undergrad student at UCLA, she was involved with on campus groups such as the Hunger Project and Habitat for Humanity.  However, she found herself gravitating toward service and volunteerism much more often when she came across Be the Cause, a non-profit organization in Los Angeles and Orange County which encouraged members to ‘serve’ through various projects across Southern California. Be the Cause also catalyzed her journey into non-profit and social work, after a momentous trip to Sri Lanka.  At the time, Shwetha was working for Yahoo! as a business operations analyst, trying to figure out ways to improve the performance of a search marketing product.

She left her job at Yahoo and moved to India, to work for Arghyam, a foundation focused on funding clean and safe drinking water projects for rural Indian communities.   Upon her return, Shwetha felt committed to a life of service, development work, and field work. She started blogging for Welldone, a non-profit in California that builds wells in Ghana, and later joined YoDesh, a magazine for the south Asian diaspora as content manager and editor. Additionally, Shwetha volunteers with for EJCW, the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, a water justice non-profit that advocates for communities of color in California who do not have access to clean drinking water. Most recently, Shwetha has joined Seva Foundation, a non-profit in Berkeley that capacity builds, trains, and supports eye care and eye health programs in 13 different countries for all communities.

Please join us on Saturday the 24th of August for a deep dive into Shwetha's inspiring journey..