#GDTBATH: Amrutha Nandam

Amrutha Nandam founded the organization Special Needs Special People to foster what she didn’t have growing up: awareness and peer support.

Nandam was bullied in elementary and middle school for the way she walks and talks. “I do those things a bit differently because I have accessibility differences,” she explains. At that early age, the experience shaped her in significant ways. While she had family, teachers and other adults to support her, she felt excluded from peers her own age. “I felt left out,” she says.

It wasn’t until high school that she met classmates who helped her feel proud about being herself. “That really had a strong impact on how I viewed my own accessibility differences,” says Nandam, who is now studying at Carolina. “I want to create the same inclusive environment that I had in high school for children of all abilities.”

So, she did.

Nandam launched Special Needs Special People in 10th grade to spread awareness and promote inclusion. Right now, the operation is a solo effort but a powerful one. Nandam believes that most bullying starts from a place of misunderstanding — but if not addressed, it can turn into more harmful actions, like the kind she experienced growing up.

“Oftentimes, I feel like we say, ‘We’re on this side, and they’re on that side,’ and this type of thought process does not get us any closer to an inclusive society,” she explains. “We need both sides to come together and try to understand each other. In my opinion, that means saying, ‘Hey, it’s OK that you don’t understand. We want to help you understand because we know you are awesome people who want to make this a better society, but maybe you don’t have the knowledge.’”

Nandam is a public policy major who’s interested in education, which informs a key part of Special Needs Special People’s mission. Since the onset of the pandemic, she’s been virtually meeting with elementary and middle school classrooms to share her story, teach children about what it means to have accessibility differences and explain how they can help build a more inclusive society where no one has to go through what she did.

“I think that normalizing this conversation on a wide scale really encourages kids to embrace differences,” Nandam says. “I also ask them what they’re going to do to make a more friendly society, and the ideas they come up with are wonderful. That is the way I measure success for SNSP — those ideas show me that they really care about making a better society for people of all abilities.”

It’s a conversation worth starting early. “[Having] that support from a young age, I think it will help kids of all abilities realize that they should be proud of their identity, which will help in so many aspects of life,” she says.

Although Nandam has been focused on education in the United States, Special Needs Special People’s reach has quietly been going global. Nandam saw a mother in the United Kingdom post on Twitter about how her son, who has a disability, didn’t have anyone to spend his birthday with. The story resonated with Nandam, who called upon her family and friends. “We all came together to collect cards for this boy,” she says. “I think this story illustrates how it takes a village to make a more inclusive community and that everyone has a part to play.”

Nandam hopes to bring more high school students into Special Needs Special People’s classroom efforts, having them work with elementary and middle school students, and to apply what she’s learned to the nonprofit sector. “In the future, I hope to be able to work in a nonprofit setting, to be able to apply lessons of leadership so one day me and a lot of other people in the SNSP community can come together to make it a nonprofit, so we can reach a wider audience,” she says.

Although Nandam continues to run Special Needs Special People by herself, she’s open to bringing others into the work. “I always welcome new ideas, and I want to tell everyone out there that SNSP is just as much your social venture as it is mine, so if you have any ideas, I am all ears.”

She knows leaving a heelprint at Carolina isn’t just a solo endeavor — that more hands make a greater impact. “When we all come together, we can make such a big difference.”