My background...

I have 13 years of experience as a school principal. I started my career as principal at Kalkeri Sangeet Vidyalaya which is an alternative school established to provide access to quality education and exposure to the performing arts to children from rural and underprivileged backgrounds. Throughout my career, I have been keen on working with children on projects in which they identify relatable societal problems and come up with sustainable solutions. In 2013, while I was at Kalkeri Sangeet Vidyalaya, we submitted an entry to the Zayed Future Energy competition, an event held in Abu Dhabi focused on sustainable energy solutions. Our team won the runner-up prize at that event. In 2014, we won the Asia’s Global High School prize at the same event. The school used the prize money to set up a solar energy plant which supplies 70% of the school’s energy needs. We also provided equipment for solar energy production in the homes of the children. I look forward to working with the children at my current school on similar projects in the coming year.

My Aikyam experience...

Aikyam fosters an atmosphere where the children have complete freedom to think for themselves and explore solutions to the problems they see in their own families, neighborhoods, and communities. It represents a great opportunity for me to encourage the children. What the children have come up with so far this year is truly amazing. Aikyam team has provided amazing support throughout the process. The program’s experiential learning objectives align well with HLC’s 7C’s framework.

I saw students broadening their mindset, asking questions, coming up surveys, and communicating with community leaders. They are thinking big. They want to develop an app that will help people in villages with no primary health clinic facility to connect with medical professionals in the surrounding areas and get help and advice for their medical issues. The plan is to collaborate with engineering college students in the region to develop this app. This is in the pipeline, and we are currently looking for sponsors to provide funding.