Meeting up with Poorna Malavath, the youngest girl ever to summit Mt. Everest, is not easy. Malavath, who became a minor celebrity in India after the successful climb, in May 2014, just a month or so shy of her 14th birthday, is in town for some meetings related to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Summit. She’s been brought here by the advocacy group Nine Is Mine, a campaign for children’s rights that is petitioning the Indian government to allocate more of the country’s GDP toward education and health.
Malavath’s schedule is packed: She spoke at the U.N. to ambassadors from India, Kenya, and Ireland, and at UNICEF. She attended a UNICEF meeting about social media and participated in at least one drumming demonstration. There are rumblings about a seminar on Long Island later this evening. When we finally do meet up—after a couple days of trading emails with one handler, a series of miscommunications with another, and a half hour of wandering aimlessly around Times Square—it becomes somewhat clear why this get-together has been hard to arrange.
“There!” exclaims Rayadas Manthena, an Indian-born Wall Street VP who goes by the name Roy, and who is helping me on the final leg of my expedition to connect with Malavath. He points triumphantly at a sea of people wearing matching royal blue T-shirts wending their way slowly up Seventh Avenue toward 42nd Street. There are a handful of adults and a soccer team’s worth of children, several of them visibly handicapped. Somebody’s filming. There’s a lot of stopping to take photos. This is not a seamless operation. Read more
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