The “City of Dreams” has a new hero. Mumbai boy Eshan Balbale, 17, has built a makeshift bamboo bridge for the kids at Sathe Nagar, who had to walk across a stream of industrial slush to reach school.

Eshan studies in Class XII at the Bedekar College in Thane. Though his effort has placed him above the average, Eshan is just a neighbourhood boy who paid heed to the plights of those little kids when politicians and the corporation turned a deaf ear. The local residents had complained several times but in vein. Parents refused to send the kids to schools as they did not want to make their way through the harmful chemicals of the industrial waste. The only other road to the school is a 1.5-kilometre detour and there is hardly any autorickshaw available in the area. The schools also witnessed high dropout rates due to this. Eshan built the temporary bridge within seven days whereas years of application and request to the administration had yielded no result. Eshan’s bridge, which connects Sathe Nagar to the PGMP colony, is 100 feet long and 4 feet wide and can carry 50 people at a time.

The country needs such invisible heroes who work to make a change and contribute to the welfare of the society when the administration fails.

Here’s a list of 5 such ordinary men and women who did extraordinary things:

Chewang Norphel:

Ladakh has an acute crisis of water as the only natural water sources. The administration was repeatedly requested for an artificial glacier project in the mountains but no steps were taken. To mend this situation, Norphel constructed 12 artificial glaciers in the Kashmir region. Due to low temperature, water freezes quickly and can easily be used as a natural water source. In 2012, Norphel diverted a river into a valley and built a 1,000 feet long glaicer in the Phuktsey Village

Priti Patkar:

Red-light areas in any city has one common problem – how to take care of the children of the sex workers. In 1986, Patkar started to visit these areas and realised the problem immediately. She built the world’s first night care centre for those children in Mumbai called Prerana. The organisation has been nominated as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Trafficking

Jadav Payeng:

The 1979 Assam flood washed away Payeng’s native place and left it barren. Since then, Payeng has been planting and pruning trees and plants in that area. By 2008, the place was got rich with its flora and fauna that endangered animals like the Royal Bengal Tiger and the One-horned Rhinoceros were found there

Palam Kalyanasundaram:

Considered as the ‘best librarian’ in India, Palam has been an example of selfless social work in Chennai. Throughout his 35-year-long career as a librarian at the Kumarkurupara Arts College, Palam donated his salary towards charity and sustained on odd jobs. Even after retiring, he worked as a waiter in Chennai to collect money for donation

Pooja Taparia:

Pooja runs Arpan, an organisation that works towards freedom from child sexual abuse. So far, it has helped around 70,000 victims, their families and even NGOs. Arpan has also indirectly helped around 212,000 people through various counseling sessions and campaigns.

Source: India Today