Rujul Zaparde, 16, of Plainsboro, co-founded a nonprofit organization that has motivated more than 450 students at 23 schools to raise funds that have been used to dig more than 30 water wells in rural India.
He was recently honored by Prudential Spirit of Community Awards as one of American’s top 10 youth volunteers. He is a junior at the Lawrenceville School.
He received a personal award of $5,000, an engraved gold medallion, a crystal trophy for his school, and a $5,000 grant from the Prudential Foundation for the nonprofit charitable organization of his choice.
Zaparde also received an all-expense-paid trip with his parents to Washington, D.C., for the week’s recognition events. He also received personal congratulations from Academy Award-winning actress Susan Sarandon.
Zaparde, born in Queens, New York, moved to Plainsboro in 2001. His father, Anil, is a software engineer, and his mother, Rashmi, works in programming.
His younger sisters, Ruchita, 13, and Renita, 12, are students at Princeton Day School. He has visited India with his family once a year since 2004.
When Rujul visited a village called Paras in 2007 he noticed they did not have any fresh water. “The villagers had to walk a few kilometers each way to reach the nearest water source — and that water wasn’t even clean,” he says. “I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to live in such a village.”
When he returned home he enlisted the help of a friend to raise $1,000 to build a well.
They held bake sales, set up a car wash, and solicited donations door-to-door. It took eight months to raise the funds, and Rujul returned to India to build the well. “I realized then that we could do even more,” he said. “We could build more wells and help more villagers.”
He founded Drinking Water for India and began to make presentations at other schools. “Clean water is a basic right,” he says. “All deserve to have access to it.” As a result, nearly three dozen villages in India have new wells.
“The $5,000 will help to build five wells,” he says. “The recognition will also help to spread the message and reach out to more students.”
