Teen Joining Board of March of Dimes

Westlake High School senior Ganesh Shankar has been selected as the first youth representative to sit on the March of Dimes’ board of directors.

The 18-year-old will be the youngest person ever to serve on the board in the history of its Southern California chapter, said Executive Director Ken Hickman.

Shankar will join about 20 doctors, professors, business executives and other community leaders in making financial and policy decisions at the board’s quarterly meetings.

Shankar, who runs this city’s “Chain Reaction,” the youth division of the March of Dimes, was selected Wednesday at a March of Dimes ceremony in Los Angeles. There, he also was awarded the chapter’s Outstanding Youth Volunteer of the Year Award.

“I never thought it would get to this level,” said Shankar, who became interested in birth defects when his cousin died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome 11 years ago. “I’m going to use this opportunity to get the word out about the March of Dimes and become even more involved.”

The March of Dimes was founded in 1938 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to defeat polio, from which he suffered. The mission grew to include improving babies’ health by preventing birth defects and infant mortality. Now, more than 3 million volunteers help the March of Dimes raise money for cutting-edge research and establish community programs.

Since he has taken a leadership role in Chain Reaction, the local chapter which his 19-year-old sister, Leena, began three years ago in Thousand Oaks, Shankar has supervised about 20 other youth volunteers from Westlake and Newbury Park high schools and La Reina High, a private all-girls school.

Last year, the teens created baskets of health food and delivered them to the Thousand Oaks Crisis Pregnancy Center. They also decorated the intensive care unit at Los Robles Regional Medical Center with snowflakes for the holidays.

Although the Southern California chapter of the March of Dimes has mandated that its board include a youth member, newly hired director Hickman said that has never happened.

The chapter, which spans six counties from San Luis Obispo County to Orange County, picked Shankar from 16 applicants, based on his outstanding leadership qualities, Hickman said.

“He was just one of those people who stood out,” Hickman said. “It’s not easy for kids in high school to be interested in healthy babies. You’ve got to have a strong self-image.”

In addition to the March of Dimes, Shankar participates in his school’s mock trial, Academic Decathlon and site council, which advises the district on the school’s needs. He also is president of his school’s California Scholarship Federation, a fund-raising group, and is chairman of the Thousand Oaks Youth Commission, which is planning a dance for disabled teenagers.

Though he doesn’t know where he is going to attend college this fall, Shankar said he hopes to become a heart surgeon.

As for his mother, Shankar’s success is no surprise.

“He was 80 years old when he was just 8,” said Debbie Shankar. “He’s always been very deep; he’s not superficial.”