Education.
Social Change.
Aditi Agrawal
Why do I exist?
I want to build a world where all students are exposed to skills of the future so that they can thrive in an evolving, uncertain world.
I grew up in a small village, called Andar, in Bihar. I had fun in the village, frolicking in the mud and playing with bubbles (read wasting all the soap in the kitchen). I went to the local school and stole pieces of chalk regularly! When I was five, I moved to New Delhi and got access to a great education.
Every summer, I would go back to Ranchi, my ancestral home and spend time with my relatives. However, even as a child, I was able to see that my friends from the village did not have access to the same quality of education that I did. There was suddenly an invisible but tangible barrier between them and me.
Growing up in India, I focused all my energy on succeeding academically, as I was expected to, and I did great. Only when I pushed myself out of my comfort zone, I began to realise that there's so much more to education than academic success. We need to impart skills to our children that would benefit them in a world where everyone is "intelligent" and automation, globalisation, and collaboration are prevalent. I wonder -
How do we enable children to be ready for their future? How do we help them become kinder, braver, and smarter?
I want to devote my life to finding answers to these questions and to improving the quality of education being provided to all children. Join me!
MY Values
"Your values become your destiny"
Happiness
"Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be."
I have found this to be exceedingly true in my life and take every moment as it comes trying to be my best possible self.
Impact
A person's impact on the world can be limitless, if we allow it to be.
I love creating impact in others' life and helping children around the world imagine and live a better future.
Empathy
"Empathy is about standing in someone else's shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes."
I believe that the more we care about others, the better we are - in everything.
Never still! Smiling faces, jubilant about life and learning.
They taught me a lot more, than I ever taught them.What do I do?
School of Future
Founder
How might we enable all students to be ready for their future?
Our world is rapidly evolving; with automation, globalisation, and collaboration working together to create a volatile mix. However, our education system has remained frozen. We are creating a scalable, social enterprise that is powered by technology to help change this dynamic.
JUMP! Foundation
Australia Partnership Manager
How might we inspire, empower and engage students to be global citizens?
JUMP! works across the world, enabling students to discover themselves, build community and become active global citizens by being immersed in experiential learning. I worked across South East Asia, Australia, and helped set up our Global Citizenship Centre at Ivanhoe Grammar School, Melbourne.
Centre for Civil Society
Project Manager, Patang
How can we create schools that are inclusive for students from economically weaker sections?
Under the Right to Education Act, unaided private schools have to reserve at least 25% seats for children from economically and socially disadvantaged communities. While schools have admitted the children, they were not able to bring fundamental changes in attitudes or pedagogies that can help foster inclusion. At Patang, we took our ideas from policy to practice by implementing a holistic academic and social inclusion programme in two private schools in South Delhi.
Educational Initiatives
Education Specialist
How do children understand mathematical concepts and how can we teach it simply and intuitively?
At Educational Initiatives, I was able to research pedagogical techniques to try and answer such questions. I developed several tools for 10-12 year old children to understand abstract ideas like prime numbers, factors and multiples, and negative integers.
Anand Niketan School, Satellite Campus
Maths Teacher - Grade 6
How might we make learning Maths fun and design a better experience for teachers using the Mindspark product?
For over a semester, I was solely responsible for 31 bratty children and their Maths learning outcomes. I used everything from the chalkboard to cooking to ensure that the children were excited to learn Maths.
I immersed myself in the shoes of a regular teacher. This helped me empathise with them and understand the areas where our product could either relieve pain or provide gain to Maths teachers across the country.
ngoFuel.org
Co-founder and Director of Content
How can you get college students to use their skills to help the non-profit sector?
ngoFuel, our brain-child, was an answer to this question. We were able to minimise the technical divide within the non-profit sector by utilising skills of students, implemented with an investment of mere 20$.
I founded and established the non-profit at the age of 17. We were also featured in the top 30 student start-ups of India, a showcase organised by the National Entrepreneurship Network in January 2011; and a full-page article in HT MINT (English) and Hindustan (Hindi).Teach For India
Volunteer and Campus Ambassador
Kierkegaard said that life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. I became a Teach For India volunteer in Gangotri Public School, Seelampur, teaching 26 children of grade two, quite by-chance. But soon enough, it became the passion of my life.
I also had the opportunity of becoming a campus ambassador for TFI. During my two year tenure, LSR students received the maximum number of placement offers in India, despite being one of the smallest outgoing batches. I also acted as the Overall Coordinator for Redraw India 2013, a TFI initiative to remove educational inequity in India, and handled all other Campus Ambassadors within Delhi. The event received participation from 1000+ students across 8 colleges in Delhi.
Aga Khan Foundation- EMACK
Apprentice, Monitoring and Evaluation Department
How can we get students to go to school?
I tried to understand why students of primary grade are often absent from schools. For almost a period of four months, I interviewed a number of different stakeholders on how we can improve access and retention rates in Kenya. This report was shared with Aga Khan Foundation and helped them implement their next field project.
College-100
Director of Indian Affairs
How might we change the world?
Gather the best minds in the world, and get them talking to each other and world leaders, about how to change the world! College-100 is an effort towards the same, and members include student presidents and leaders from Oxford, Harvard, Columbia, Gates Scholars, etc. Some of the leaders and topics that I was able to discuss; Mary Robinson (Climate Justice League), Ambassador Ron Neumann (Middle East), Charles Best (Education), etc.
Portfolio
Enabling Inclusion
Making schools inclusive for all students under Project Patang, CCS
Innovating in Kenya
Social innovation project for The Amani Institute, Kenya
Teaching with EdTech
Maths can be fun too, especially with Mindspark from Educational Initiatives
"Education... is the indispensable element,
the sunlight and oxygen,the foundation on which everything else is built."
Lowell Milken
My Foundations
The Amani Institute
Social Innovation Management in Kenya
My five months in Kenya with The Amani Institute gave me the vision and courage to aim higher and to truly accept myself. It provided me with the tools to be a change-maker, to approach problems strategically and to empathise before designing solutions.
I was the youngest in our cohort and I learned a great amount from my peers, a group of 22 talented change-makers from 15 countries, spanning age groups of 21 - 37.
Lady Shri Ram College for Women
Bachelor of Arts, English
College was all about finding myself and understanding my strengths and passions. Literature provided me with the perfect platform to explore different ideologies and discourses. I was able to study key literary pieces from around the world and learn from them about theory, history, sociology and philosophy.
I had the opportunity to work with some truly phenomenal women and professors, to explore questions around peace and conflict resolution; art and architecture and the effects of a globalised world.
Commonwealth Youth Programme
Discovering Young Leaders Programme
The Commonwealth Youth Programme (CYP) - Africa Centre of the Commonwealth Secretariat designed the DYLP 2013 as an online interactive youth leadership training programme which aimed to empower young leaders by providing them access to 500 peers and 50 panelists from all over the world.
Model United Nations
Understanding world problems
I was fortunate to be a delegate at several MUNs, including the Harvard National MUN 2011 in Boston. I also acted as Chairperson for General Assembly at the Rome MUN 2012, guiding a committee of 170 delegates. Model UN provided me with an unparalleled opportunity to experience first-hand, the challenges of international diplomacy, grapple with some of today’s most pressing world issues, and interact and learn from other students, across the globe.
"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!"
-Goethe
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