Campaign Overview

I am Sunena Gupta, a 21-year-old Indian classical dancer, a student at the University of California Berkeley, and chronic illness and mental health activist. I am combining these three distinct personalities into one in order to create a difference in the communities around me. I have suffered from Alopecia, an auto-immune disease since the age of two. My worst attacks came during my last years of high school and then again in my first year of college in California. As you can expect, this caused severe emotional stress to a teenage girl. Fast forwarding the story, after many attempts at treatments and an entry into the world of depression and anxiety, I finally understood that while I may have Alopecia, I did not want to let Alopecia have me. So I took the other extreme and decided to turn what I considered to be the worst thing in my life into the best. I had been trained since childhood in a traditional art form called Kathak, the oldest Indian classical dance form, that is known for its story-telling aspect. So I conceptualized and directed a dance-theater production, titled “Umeed: Colors of Hope”, that told my story, with an element of hope. The story of struggling with chronic illness, mental health, and self-image issues is not just my story, but everyone’s story as they go through their individual struggles in life and search for that silver lining of hope. I performed this production at prestigious venues in Singapore, London and New York, and I am about to go to India in August 2019 to perform the same in four cities (Delhi, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Gurgaon). While Alopecia had affected my looks, and the performing arts have a strong emphasis on the aesthetic of the dancer, I was challenging stereotypes to make my story heard and to give others hope. Because I believe that everyone can have this same attitude of turning their “weakness” into their strengths. I want to start conversations where I believe that social stigma should not be a setback and I do hope that you will help me help those who are unable to voice their inner struggles. I have been using this production to raise funds for local charities in the cities that I perform in and will be continuing to do so as this journey proceeds further. In Singapore I supported Project SMILE, which empowers underprivileged women in challenging circumstances and raised $30,000 for them. In London I supported Papyrus, a UK-based charity that helps with youth suicide prevention and raised $3,000 for them. Here i would raise funds for Akshaya Patra -providing food to hungry school children and enabling a better future for them 

Campaign Donors

• Wow!, Congrats, You have a chance to become first Contributor!