Off The Wall

As a child, Divya Ramachandran drew pictures to tame her hyperactivity and keep her mind engaged. Years later, she’s using the same approach to change children’s lives.

- Chirag Mohanty Samal

The most mundane choices in our lives sometimes lay the foundations for our future. Divya Ramachandran’s mother was only looking for a way to distract her mischievous little girl and keep her out of trouble. So she handed her a box of crayons and a sheet of paper. It worked better than she had hoped. “The art and craft work that my mom gave me helped me calm down and introduced me to my life’s calling,” says the Chennai-based 29-year-old design teacher and founder of The Happy Wall Project.

The mission is to beautify the streets of Bangalore and Chennai by showing its abandoned walls some love. Or at least that was the mission when The Happy Wall Project was started in 2015 and it’s been successful—Ramachandran has since transformed more than 100 walls in schools, cafés, gyms, homes and railway stations. But the project soon took up a bigger cause: it would uplift the lives of underprivileged kids through art. Not only did it spruce up the schools meant for these kids and got them to come to school daily, but it also encouraged their creativity by involving them and egging them on to create something meaningful.