Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: The teenager empowering thousands to succeed

Episode Date: October 4, 2025

An 18-year-old entrepreneur who has helped more than twenty thousand teenagers get skills, training and mentoring has been recognised with a global student prize. Adarsh Kumar grew up in poverty in rural Bihar and says he was inspired by wanting to solve the problems he saw around him - and the example set by his hardworking single mother. He plans to use the ten thousand dollar prize to help improve the lives of even more people - and believes the first step in changing the world is to change his home state. Also: we find out how teenagers who've been struggling with school attendance are learning important life lessons - from three year olds. The scheme pairs them with a nursery child to give them a sense of responsibility and helping others. We celebrate the winner of Fat Bear Week in Alaska - which saw tens of thousands of people around the world vote for the brown bear who'd done best at gorging on salmon and berries to prepare for winter. How new technology is helping Premier League football fans with sight problems, the jollof rice wars heat up with a record breaking dish in Nigeria, and the people spreading joy over the internet through memes. Plus an inspirational speech from a 12-year-old who wants to improve understanding about autism. Leo Bird says he's not broken, just different, and that's why his friends love him. Our weekly collection of inspiring, uplifting and happy news from around the world.Presenter: Jannat Jalil. Music composed by Iona Hampson

This is the Happy Pod from the BBC World Service. I'm Jean-Ut Jalil and in this edition... I saw the challenges in my family, you know, the people around me, the community, etc. That is what you sort of inspired me to, you know, to push me harder. A remarkable 18-year-old who's won a global prize for helping thousands of others get the skills and support they need to lift themselves out of poverty. Also, how other teenagers are learning life lessons from three-year-olds. She teaches me, like, that I need to be more confident so I can communicate and help other people.

We celebrate the fat bears of Alaska as a bowl cup for winter. They were playful, they were mating, bears that normally would fight, we're getting along. If bears are relaxed and well-fed, they're happy. So people and bears, they have a lot common as far as it goes. And? It helps me to see the game, how I want to see it. And it allows me to see the players. I can see their skills.

How new technology is helping partially sighted football fans see the beautiful game in all its glory. He's only 18, but Indian student, Adash Kumar, is celebrating a remarkable. remarkable achievement. Brought up by a single mother, he grew up in poverty in rural Bihar and aged just 14. He left home with $10 to get a better education. A year later, on a tiny budget with a second hand laptop bought with his mother's life savings, he created a non-profit organisation to help underprivileged young people get skills, mentorship and opportunities. Since then, 20,000 students across. India have benefited, and Adosh has just won a global student prize of $100,000 from US-based educational technology company Chegg.org for his efforts. He was selected from more than 11,000 students worldwide. I couldn't believe, you know, that, okay, this is actually happening. And, you know, there's, you know, been so many first things for me during this trip.

This is the first time, you know, I've been traveling apart from India. So there's, like, first abroad trip for me. So I couldn't believe it, you know, everything has happened in such short span of time. But at the same time, it was full of gratitude, it was full of emotion. And it's all the more remarkable because you grew up in a part of rural Bihar where there weren't many opportunities. You had limited access to things like electricity, internet. And you were brought up just by your mother. Yeah. I think, you know, growing up in Bihar, especially the rural part, is, you know, what has made me, what I do today. I saw the challenges, you know, in my family, you know, the people around me, the community, etc.

That is what, you know, sort of inspired me to, you know, to push me harder. What I believe is that, you know, internet has played a very important role in my life. And like any other kid, I also started searching things like how to hack service of a game, you know, temple run, etc, etc. But I stumbled upon things like coding, entrepreneurship. And, you know, because I had seen so many problems, entrepreneurship, coding technology seemed to be a solution to do those. and every day there's been some challenge in life or you are reading stuff online and you're getting inspired to do something

you're reading out Mahatma Gandhi great leaders of the world, there's in Mandela and you're so inspired to do something so that curiosity led me to learn about a lot of things and take action that's why I started my first startup in grade 8th How were you able to access the internet?

My mother spent her entire life saving to buy me a second-hand laptop so that's why I got the internet and the laptop to do you work So your mother is clearly a big inspiration in your life? 1,000% I remember, you know, like, when my mom actually moved out of the village and she used to walk for kilometres just, you know,

and she used to say, okay, if I, you know, pay for this public transport, you know, I'll spend, you know, 10 rupees, which is not, I don't know, it's not even half cent here. So she used to all this stuff, we can buy, you know, potatoes with vegetables for this money. So all of those things, I think, stayed within me and I was, you know, too young. So, like, all of those have been instilled inside me. And I think the most importantly, I've learned, you know, hard work, grit and frugality from my mother, which I use in my, you know, daily life, start-ups, you know, whatever I do.

I mean, you're clearly very talented. But what inspired you to create a mentoring scheme for so many other young students when you yourself have a lot of obstacles that you had to overcome? Yeah, yeah. So, as I mentioned, when I got the internet, you know, I was doing a lot of stuff and I was trying to learn skills myself. So while I was learning skills in, you know, sitting in a village, I face a lot of challenges in terms of getting exposure, getting mentorship, getting opportunities, getting recognition, you know, look for people who can just believe in you, right, say that, oh, others, just go for it, you can do it.

And when I moved out of my hometown at the age of 14 and when I met all of these great people, I thought, why not connect both of these networks? You know, okay, now I have access to mentors, now understand that pain point, now understand that problem. So I can't wait for someone else to solve this, so let's solve this. And entrepreneurship is all about problem solving. And tell me, what will you do with the money? you've won $100,000.

That's a very good question. I think, you know, this money has come for, you know, purpose. As, you know, some great person said, great power comes with great responsibility. So I think I'll mostly going to spend the money, use the money very well for the impact, creating, you know, better quality impact and also increase in terms of numbers.

So quantity and quality. You're only 18 now. The world is your oyster. What's your end goal? When I was very, very young, I think I'm still young, but when I was very, very young, I wanted to make a utopian world. I wanted to, you know, make everything perfect, you know, no one should be, you know, hungry, no one should be no illiterate. Everyone should have access to everything.

Now, growing up, you know, after having, you know, sort of years experience, I think I've realized, you know, I've narrowed down and, you know, what I want to do is that I want to use a policy, education, entrepreneurship, to bring change in society. And in fact, in the world, and I always say this, that, you know, my first step of changing world is to change Bihar, which is my home state. So I'll start from there, changing the lives of people, you know, doing social development and hopefully, you know, bring it to the world, entire world. Inspirational student, Ardosh Kumar, the founder of the mentoring scheme, Skillso. This time of year sees students returning to school in many countries around the world and while many children swiftly get back into the swing of things, for others it's not so easy. One charity here in the UK has come up with an unusual idea to help teenagers who struggle with

attendance and engagement. As Rebecca Wood reports, it involves pairing them with pre-school children. 13-year-old Sienna never thought she'd be taking life lessons from a three-year-old. She teaches me like that I need to be more confident so I can communicate and help other people. I thought it'd just be something fun to do, but it's helped me really a lot. Sienna's part of a scheme that pairs teenagers with toddlers from a local nursery in a bid to help their engagement with school and learning. Before meeting three-year-old Tia, she says she was often absent. I'd never be in a school. I'd be like hiding somewhere or I'd be at home. I just had a lot of anxiety. But then ever since I came here, I've learned more about how to communicate, so it's

been a lot better and then my attendance has improved. The issue of school avoidance is a big one around the world. Many assume it's a problem accelerated by the COVID pandemic when schools were shut, but for long periods of time. In reality, statistics appear to show global attendance has seen improvement since then, but for many countries such as the UK, persistent absence rates remain a concern. 12-year-old Miller is another pupil taking part in the scheme. He struggled to stay in class because he has a lot of energy, making it hard for him to sit still.

But after his sessions with 3-year-old Andrew, he's been able to focus more on his schoolwork. I was a bit like nervous It took me like two weeks to like say yeah because I was like really energetic and this will just make me like really, really calm Power 2, the charity that runs the scheme gets referrals from schools

then takes teenagers out of class for one afternoon or morning a week to mental their nursery buddy Sam Marcus is the director of services and says a lot of thought is put into the pairings We try and match them on personality so we might have some young people who really struggle to contain their energy, if you like. So we pair them up with similar types of smaller children.

And it just helps them to balance out. I think it's more often than not young people are not giving those positions of trust responsibility and they really thrive in that environment. And it's not just the teenagers who benefit. Often the toddler has additional needs such as speech and language delays or difficulty-making friends. Lisa, who teaches at one of the nurseries involved, said it has a big impact on the younger children too.

They know it's their special person and just having that one-to-one time for that hour each Friday. It's just lovely to see when the teenagers come in, them, them going over, hugging them, and it's just amazing. Dr Daniel Weisberg is a consultant clinical psychologist and regularly works with young people who are feeling disconnected from their education. So why do schemes like this work?

Think about when children are at school. There's a lot of rules and none of it is under children's control. This programme in particular says, what if we give them a responsibility, if children are responsible for a little child, they feel empowered, they learn from what works and what doesn't, and children feel like they're making a real difference. And while this scheme is just one small programme aiming to help with a very complex issue of school avoidance, it's something, or indeed someone so small, that can sometimes make the biggest difference.

Rebecca Wood. Countries can get competitive about their national dishes, and Nigeria has just turned up the heat in a food debate that has lasted for decades. Who makes the best Jolof rice? It's a popular meal across West Africa, typically made from long-grain rice, tomatoes and spices, often with other vegetables or meat. But each country has its own version.

And in a friendly rivalry known as the Jolof Wars, people clash over the origin of this staple dish. and of course whose tastes best. Now, as Kieran Galpin reports, a woman in Nigeria has secured the Guinness World Record for the largest ever pot of it. Music, 10 chefs and 9,000 kilos of food, all for a Guinness World Record attempt in Lagos, Nigeria.

While many of us are bored by the humdrum of daily cooking, one woman had a different view, cooking as much joll of rice as she possibly could. This announcer narrated her effort. You want to make history right now. We're about to do something amazing today. It ain't slipping. The dish required a huge amount of ingredients,

4,000 kilos of rice and 170 kilos of goat meat, for example. And 300 people took two months making the pot, which still broke as the dish was weighed. But there was enough evidence to win her world record. Here's the head chef, Hilda Bassi. We always say Nigeria, we are the giants of Africa, and Jolop Rights is a discourse that has been happening within so many African countries. And sometimes if you go to random countries, you would find someone and say you're Nigeria,

and the first thing they ask you is about Jolop Frights, right? So I figured as the Giants of Africa, it only makes sense that we are the ones that pioneer making the largest pots of Nigerian Joloff Price. Those who had queued up to watch got behind her attempt and were supportive of her culinary patriotism. She's placed us on the map and she's doing it again. It's amazing, like setting a very good record for Nigeria and Nigerians. Like, she's representing everybody.

So it's amazing. I'm so happy. Jolof Rice, you know the vibe. Now, how do they talk about Ghana Jolov and Nigerian Jolov? Nigerian Jolov the best. Some felt the Jolof Wars were settled after United Nations cultural organization UNESCO declared Senegal the originator of the dish. But with this Guinness World Record, Nigeria can claim a different piece of Jolliffe heritage. That report by Kieran Garpin.

Still to come in the happy pod. I've got the best mates ever. Yeah, I might think I'm a little bit weird or different. But that's exactly why they don't like me. Because being different isn't a bad thing. It's just me. How a 12-year-old is helping to improve our understanding of autism. Now to Alaska, where the race has been on to crown the winner of the prestigious annual Fat Bear Week.

People have been voting for their favourites in Catmine National Park as the bears eat their way to adequate fatness to prepare for winter hibernation. Organizers encouraged voters to pick the one they believed best exemplifies fatness and success in brown bears. And this was the announcement on TV. We have a winner. Chunk, a towering brown bear with a broken jaw has taken the top prize in Alaska's popular fat bear contest. This is Chunk's first win after narrowly finishing in second place the three previous years. The annual competition for those. who haven't been following it, it allows viewers to follow 12 bears on live webcams,

then they can cast their ballots in a bracket-style single-illumination tournament. By the way, Chunk weighs an estimated 1,200 pounds. I know, and he's a broken jaw. So he's playing injured, and he still prevailed, what an athlete. Well, Chunk took the title from two-time winner Grazer, but Grazer's club Little Miss Biggie was crowned junior champion. Adrienne White spoke to a park ranger at Catmai, Christine Lohberg. What we like to do with this celebration is to celebrate these bears

and how they're going to survive through hibernation. It's definitely from an environmental perspective. It's to keep people involved with the environment, to learn about bears, to learn about our national parks, all those three. And it does work. People, they watch these programs, they do want to come to parks and see bears or just enjoy wildlife in general, which is really important. This year at Catmine National Park, we had a record salmon run.

It was one of the biggest salmon runs in, wow, it could have been 100 years even. And the bears did amazingly fine this year, eating plenty calories by taking advantage of the salmon run. They could go anywhere to get salmon this year, which was really exciting. You could walk along anywhere and see bears, and they were playful, they were mating. Bears that normally would fight, we're getting along. It was just to show us what happens when people are relaxed, how they act. Bears are the same way, because if people are relaxed, they're happy. If bears are relaxed and well-fed, they're happy.

So people and bears, they have a lot common as far as it goes. People are mainly interacting with the bears virtually, aren't they? How do you think having people engage that way that plays an important role in preservation of environment? It does play a big role because this way people, if they cannot make it to cat, or any national park, they still could enjoy wildlife in their living room. And so this is really nice that Explore.org has these cameras, not just a catmite, but all over the world. You could go to Africa.

You could go to other places to watch, you know, other animals. It educates people how important our world is and how important wildlife is in our world and how important preservation of these amazing animals all over the world, not just a catmai happens to be. because this is a, our planet's an amazing planet and we have amazing animals and we need to preserve all these wild creatures that are roaming around the earth. I love just enjoying and looking at what we have to offer to show people from all around the world in our national parks. And one thing that our national parks do is they preserve land. So it won't be developed. So it's pretty much the way it was found a long time ago at the beginning of time. So the habitat is there.

It is protected so we can have wildlife in all our national parks. And this is everywhere from Katmai National Park in Alaska, Denali National Park, all the way down to the lower 48th where we have Yellowstone, Yosemite, Teton's. All parks have something different to offer, even the Everglades. Every park has something unique to offer. And people will go to their nearest national park to explore the animals. It could even be sea animals. It could be the Channel Islands. It could be whatever.

And they have these amazing experiences interacting with nature and wildlife. And then they want to be out in wildlife in nature as well. Why do you think people love bears so much? I think they love bears because they are a mystery. I mean, let's face it, we don't know too many animals that the size of a bear. They'll go on hibernation for many months and then come out and just start acting, you know, living life again. That's very fascinating to many people. And people, I believe, love looking at anything that's unteamed today's world that seems like it's shrinking, to know that there's somewhere in the world where animals are still like they were hundreds of years ago, living like they were hundreds of years ago in places that aren't developed.

It makes it special for them because they go back in time and they're really having a nice experience by just enjoying nature up close and personal in their living room or in person. Catmine National Park Ranger Christine Lohberg, and you can see the bears and animals from across the world at explore.org forward slash live cams. New technologies helping football fans with sight problems to get more out of going to live games. It's been developed with the English Premier League club Crystal Palace, and 12-year-old Sophia, who is registered blind, is one of the first to try it. Ricky Bolato went to meet her. It's matchday at Crystal Palace We're here at Selhurst Park Where loads of people are getting excited for kickoff

Including superfan Sophia I've been a fan since I was nine years old Since you were nine What do you love about the game I love the Atlas Fear The crowd, the goals Sophia is now 12 And is registered blind

Due to a rare condition called bimacular atrophy Can you remember what it was like when you went to your first match? I couldn't really see the player's facial expressions or who scored that goal. I can't really see all of the detail in the game. It's very blurry for me and also I can't really see like the players kicking the ball. According to the Royal National Institute of Blind People, blind and partially cited fans are half as likely to attend live sporting events compared to the UK average.

But now thanks to cutting-edge tech and a South London football club willing to lead the charge, that might be about to change. Crystal Palace has become the first football club in the world to offer new sight-enhancing headsets at home games, helping visually impaired fans experience football like never before. When I put it on,

it helps me to see the game. how I want to see it and it allows me to see the players I can see their skills so you're seeing all of that footage which could be so far away up close in front of your eyes the technology is made by London-based

start-up give vision Joanna Liddington explains how it works the headset Sophia is using works in two main ways there's a camera on the headset itself which Sophia can choose to look at whatever she wants to With this joy stick, you can zoom in, you can zoom out. But the other function is she can connect in with the TV cameras.

So around the pitch, there's lots of different people filming what's going on, and that's what you see at home. And she's getting what you see at home in her headset in real time at the stadium. And the difference for Sophia has been remarkable. Before it made me disconnected, And now I feel like I'm part of the crowd. As the game begins, a wider vision takes shape and the hope that other London clubs will follow Palace's lead.

This could be a girl. And after the final whistle, a surprise. Sophia meets her hero, Palace captain Mark Gay. Did you know you were going to meet Mark today? No. No. So this is a huge surprise. It's so important that Sophia is here today because she's using this special kit to make sure that she can see.

Do you think it's something that loss of children should be able to get access to? I think so. I think so. Given children the opportunity to experience what we experience and maybe things that they're not able to experience to the fullest, definitely something that I think everyone should be able to do. Would you agree? Yes. Good, good, good.

This could be the beginning of a brighter, clearer future for fans with sight loss. That report by Ricky Bolato. We've been hearing how the internet helped a poor boy from India to achieve great things as well as winning a big prize. And another wonderful thing about the internet is that however niche your hobby is, you can probably find an online community of people who share it. Facebook alone claims more than one and a half billion people use its groups every month. But what about running these online communities? Giving up your free time to approve posts and stop the endless, inevitable,

arguments. Our reporter, Will Chalk, has been meeting people who do it and asking them why. My name is Jeff DeJonbo. I'm turning 40 in a couple months. And yeah, I guess years and years ago, I got fired from my job and got into Simpsons memes and wound up co-creating Simpsons board post site. Jeff's Facebook group is for people who like to make memes based around American TV show The Simpsons. They'll take a freeze frame from the show, Modifference, and it or put some text over it to make a joke and post it in the group. If you think it sounds a niche, you're wrong. It's got more than 400,000 members from all over the world.

And running it, Jeff says, can feel like a full-time job. If you're not good with boundaries, it could take up your entire day. The bulk of the work, according to Jeff, is making sure new posts follow the group's rules. And the arguments in the comments in the comment section don't violate Facebook's rules and get the group banned. Jeff has never made a single penny for his efforts, so why do it? Well, his answer is more life-affirming than you might expect. We really try to have a culture of encouraging people to create a new meme for the very first time, and then they would just love it, and then they would make another one and another,

and just get better and better and better. Yeah, I regularly liked having that impact on people's lives, basically. You know, you load up the group. You're not feeling good. you see some games, you laugh. Hopefully that spirals out a little bit. In another corner of the internet, I meet Jodie, who's from Leeds in England. I feel like everybody likes memes.

It's the thing that you do. When you want to chase somebody up, you send them a funny meme. She gives up around two hours a day to moderate three meme pages based around Harry Potter, Marvel and Squid Game. She says the people on the meme pages, who she's never met, are some of her best friends.

I speak to some of these people more than I speak to my own family, these people become like super, super close that you just almost forget the online aspect of it. It's, I never thought that I could be so close to people that, you know, lived in like Bangladesh or America or Pakistan or South Africa. Like it's been an eye-opener and it's, yeah, I wouldn't change it. Meme fan, Jodi, ending that report by Will Chalk.

We started this episode with an inspirational 18-year-old. old, and we thought we would end it with an inspirational 12-year-old boy who's been attracting widespread praise on social media across Australia and beyond for opening up about being autistic. Leo Bird chose to talk personally about his diagnosis in front of his whole school in Sydney, in the hope of helping others, and his mother then posted it online. Leo, who also has ADHD, compared himself to a limited edition Lego set, saying I'm not broken, I'm just built different. His speech, which won the school's young communicator competition, was designed to help people understand the condition and give other young people with autism someone to relate to. Even if you show me something 475 times, I still might not remember, especially if it's boring.

But if it's something I love, I'll remember every detail. I also worry about a lot of things. Like, what's for dinner at 7 a.m? What card we're taking to school? What time are leaving? What time are coming back? Basically, I'm the family's artificial calendar. I sometimes dip, which means I do little moments that help me feel calm.

Especially when I'm anxious. And yes, I tow walk, but I'd like to think of that is giving myself some extra height. I also say really random things to make no sense in conversations, like telling someone what your traffic lights are invented. No, seriously, it was 1868. You're welcome. Some autistic kids struggle to make friends, but I've got the best mates ever. Yeah, they might think I'm a little bit weird or different. but that's exactly why they like me because being different isn't a bad thing, it's just me.

So if you ever meet someone with autism, don't be mean to them. They might just have a limited brain with bonus features like me. Anyway, if you excuse me, I've got an elevator video to watch on YouTube. Thank you. That was 12-year-old Leo Bird from Sydney. And that's all from the Happy Pod for now, but if you want to comment on anything in this episode or you have a happy or inspiring story you think we should cover, we'd love to hear from you. Send us an email or a voice note to Global Podcast at BBC.co.com. And you can now watch some of our interviews on YouTube.

Just search for the Happy Pod. This edition was mixed by Holly Smith. The producers were Holly Gibbs, Harry Bly and Rachel Bogley. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jeanette Jalil. Until next time, goodbye.