Neha Gadde (left) and Hridha Mathuria (right) posing with boxes filled to the brim with clothes that had been donated to 12k. (Source: Gadde and Mathuria)

“You would think that companies would want to help out a nonprofit that just wants to do a good thing,” says Hridha Mathuria, a junior at Thompkins High School in Houston, Texas, “but just convincing them that this cause is something they should invest in and something that they should really be donating to was very very challenging.”

Hridha Mathuria and her business partner Neha Gadde, a junior in her second year at Stanford Online High School, have been, according to Mathuria, “best friends since out of the womb.” Gaining inspiration from a speaker who came to their school in freshman year to discuss how food insecurity affected her life, Gadde and Mathuria decided to begin their own nonprofit organization, The 12k Project, to “make an impact in something that other people weren’t.”

With the goal of collecting 1,000 cans of food every month, adding up to 12,000 per year (hence the name 12k), the two ambitious freshmen embarked on a journey to help people in their community—and eventually nationwide—battle hunger.

From daily runs to their local Krogers, begging the manager to donate canned goods, Gadde and Mathuria have transformed 12k from a local nonprofit to an international one.

The two competed at BFLA nationals (Future Business Leaders of America), where they were able to showcase their project among other very successful future business leaders and eventually expanded 12k internationally to India in mid-2022. The 12k Project kept thriving, and the pair of high schoolers began not only collecting canned goods but clothes and hygiene products as well.

“I think starting off with food was just where our base was with food insecurity, and then we realized that there were so many other things that those same families, other than just food insecurity, were struggling with—the lack of supplies for school, old clothes, just stuff like that,” says Mathuria.

While they at first experienced a great deal of trouble trying to get people to donate clothes, the co-founders of 12k eventually got to a point where they found themselves spending practically entire days sitting on the floor, sorting through thousands of trash bags of clothes and hygiene products. According to Gadde, all the collected children’s clothes are being sent to an organization that donates clothes to kids for back-to-school, and all the women’s clothes are being donated to domestic violence shelters for women.

As can be expected through their passion and perseverance, Gadde and Mathuria plan to expand and develop 12k as greatly as possible. In fact, the two have recently been discussing how non-local high school students can help participate in their nonprofit. For those living outside of Houston, the pair agree that they’d love for people from different states nationwide to reach out to them and create their own little “sections” of 12k. “We’re ready to branch out and do chapters around the US,” Gadde says, “and I think [Stanford Online High School] would be perfect for that.”

And, for those who cannot physically participate in 12k, whether it be locally or nationally, Gadde explains that reaching out to companies that could donate or be donated to is a large part of what volunteers do in The 12k Project. She also clarifies that something as simple as reposting the nonprofit’s social media posts can help spread the message and encourage others to join.

However, as Mathuria emphasizes, creating a nonprofit like 12k or simply joining one is something that has to be done from the heart. “It’s a passion project—if you don’t have a passion for stuff like this, it’s not going to roll well because it [requires] a lot of patience and a lot of perseverance.”