Srisindhu Medukonduru is a dedicated student at Independence High School. In addition to StemStars Literacy Foundation, she participated in HOSA, TSA, and Nightingale Advocacy. Her hobbies include participating in debate tournaments, baking, gardening, and being actively involved in healthcare advocacy in addition to promoting STEM involvement among children.
Aradhana Saravanan is a committed student at Independence High School. In addition to StemStars Literacy Foundation, she participated in DECA, BPA, ISM and co-presdient of Nightingale Advocacy. Her hobbies include reading, cooking, scrapbooking, and shopping. She is determined on enhancing STEM opportunities for a greater number of students.
Parnika Lolakapuri is a passionate student at Centennial Highschool. In addition to StemStars Literacy Foundation, Parnika has participated in HOSA, DECA,NHS, international youth neuroscience, and health science clinicals, in which she earned both her CNA and MA certifications. Her hobbies include shopping, dancing, and volunteering. She is devoted to expanding STEM opportunities for more students.
Aanchal Shah is a devoted student at Centennial Highschool. In addition to StemStars Literacy Foundation, Aanchal has participated in DECA, BPA, ISM, and INCubatorEDU in which she cofounded a company. Her hobbies include dance and reading. She strives to better STEM opportunities for students.
STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Essentially, many children coming from underserved backgrounds normally do not lead careers pertaining to STEM, and they become a minority group in these fields due to their lack of proper resources and education facilities. From an early age, due to their heavy trauma and emotional instability, they have a belief system that they will never be able to be in a good financial standing or enter into a STEM career, often making educational and mental health a low priority. Our team wants to deal with this issue by inspiring an interest in STEM for these children of lower socioeconomic status in our own creative ways to help open their eyes to the real possibilities of what they can do if they choose to focus on their learning, despite their circumstances. This interest developed at a younger level can help these kids continue to pursue their learning in the future, and we want to also provide them with the resources they need to mentally get better. Indeed, any interaction with these kids can make a significant impact on their life, even on just one child.
In an effort to support underserved children, we want to create maker spaces, launch mock science fairs, and make our own hands-on STEM learning activities to stimulate an interest in learning amongst these kids. We purchase our own materials to create our activities, and most of our events are community events at local libraries, schools, shelters, or halls. Our in-person work concerns supporting children in Texas, but we have inspired leaders in other states and countries in starting their own chapters of this non-profit in order to further support the goal of inspiring STEM interest and support the mental health needs among underserved children in homeless shelters, orphanages, domestic abuse homes, foster homes, and rural areas globally. Indeed, we lead advocacy initiatives to support the mental health funding of these children in addition to them being provided proper mental health resources all year around. We are the largest youth-led global non-profit working to combat the educational and mental health struggles of underprivileged children.