Episode 4 Ananya Bhatia - ”Shreveport-Bossier: My City, My Community, My Home”

Ananya Bhatia, Junior at Caddo Magnet High School, sits down with Jeffrey Goodman, Director of Marketing and Development with the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana, to answer the following questions:

 

0:41 1. Generally, I don’t start an episode with a guest’s bio, simply because I expect the bio to emerge through the discussion. But the bio of my guest today is so extensive and so impressive that I would like to begin with at least the high points. My guest today is Ananya Bhatia.

 

Ananya is currently a junior at Caddo Magnet High. She is the president of GirlUp, the founder of Caddo Magnet High’s chapter of the Ted-ED Student Talks Program, secretary of National Honor Society, Service Coordinator of Key Club, Vice President of UNICEF, community outreach chair for Teen Advisory Committee of Northwest Louisiana, active member of Model United Nations and a member of the Legislative Youth Advisory Council. Ananya was accepted to the school of the New York Times where she had the opportunity to grow her interest in journalism and international affairs, and she has played the violin for 11 years.

 

Ananya, welcome and thank you so much for agreeing to come on our podcast.

 

We have a long history in Shreveport-Bossier of exporting many of our community’s best and brightest talents. They grow up here, go away to college, accumulate great knowledge, build powerful networks, and end up never returning to live here. With all of that said, would you ever consider living here after college? If not, how would Shreveport-Bossier have to change from what you see today to be a place you would want to return to, to live after college?

 

4:24 2. You are unusually involved, how did you become so service-oriented? Who taught you or inspired you to be such an activist in your community?

 

6:28 3. Let’s talk hypothetically for a second. You are in Washington DC for a national Ted-ED Student Talks conference and you are having lunch with a group of students from the east coast who have never heard of Shreveport-Bossier. They say, “Ananya, what’s it like where you live?” What do you tell them?

 

8:22 4. Let’s continue talking hypothetically. You become good friends with one of the students you meet at the Ted-ED Student Talks conference and he or she makes a trip to Shreveport-Bossier to come and see you. They are only in town for one full day. What all do you show or where all do you take him or her to give him or her a feel for your community?

 

10:38 5. Fast forward two years, you are hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away off at college. What are the things you miss most about your community when you’re away from it?

 

11:59 6. As you look around the Shreveport-Bossier community, what are the things you see that make you most hopeful that life is getting better here and that we are making progress as a community?

 

17:39 7. Lastly, what’s the community you want to see here?