Today we’d like to introduce you to Aksh Garg.
Hi Aksh, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I saw the educational frameworks crumble; teachers migrated to virtual learning overnight with no structure and guidance; students struggled indefinitely. Once incubators for inventions, crowd-drawing science fairs were termed carriers of disease during COVID-19. To resolve this educational deficiency, I sought to create a place where students learned comfortably and where anyone who passionately pursued a project could make discoveries. An idea of constructing a free eLearning platform, IgniteMinds, providing academic help in all K-12 subjects and mentorship on research projects evolved naturally. As a bold visionary leader who values teamwork and believes in challenging the norm, I spent weeks working till 2 AM designing my website, relearning JavaScript, hosting web servers, drafting research outlines, and preparing slide decks. I interviewed and recruited tutors and research mentors and pitched my idea to schools, principals, teachers, orphanages, and underprivileged communities to popularize student involvement.
April 16th, four weeks after embarking upon my journey, IgniteMinds was born. IgniteMinds quickly mushroomed to receive over a hundred tutoring requests weekly; tutor applications flowed in; the research program exploded with popularity. I recruited, trained, and supervised an enthusiastic team of over 20 board members with curriculum, research, public relations, outreach, and blogging divisions with the upsurge in demand. I instituted biweekly tutor meetings, weekly updates, and mini-awards to boost cohesiveness. I wrote monthly newsletters informing parents about organizational updates and detailed instruction emails to professional webinar panelists, enhancing my verbal and written communication skills. Over 115 students applied for the summer research mentorship program, where I mentored students 1-on-1 on three-month-long computational projects. I took joy in reading their passion-infused applications—and great regret in only being able to mentor 70. I coordinated webinars with industry professionals from Amazon and Khan Academy Medicine and professors from Brown, CMU, MIT, Northeastern, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and USC.
I also organized a virtual conference with 153 participants, where these student researchers could present their work. I’m proud of the nineteen now published in peer-reviewed journals. Reflecting, I didn’t think educating 2300 students or launching chapters in San Diego, Chicago, and Korea could be possible. I didn’t expect to receive daily partnership requests from professional business development representatives and startup accelerators, become the largest free student-run eLearning platform on LinkedIn with over 2,130 followers, or inspire the founding and growth of four nonprofits in my community. However, I’m grateful to the multinational team of 130 tutors and 73 researchers from 12 countries, furthering this once 1-person mission of mine. IgniteMinds taught me that the best solutions are products of the intermixing of diverse ideas, life experiences, and philosophies. Although frustrating to have my ideas sometimes challenged by the board, our debates and discussions allowed us to consider the problems from many perspectives, showing us the best means of furthering our services’ scope. Through IgniteMinds, my intellectual exercise of building, debugging, and deploying programs became a conduit to promote learning, spur research, and build communities. Carrying this legacy forward at college, I’m ecstatic to march towards attaining global educational equality!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Since its inception, IgniteMinds has been fraught with technical and organizational challenges. Creating, designing, and hosting a secure website, optimizing its search engine index, accelerating its backend operations, and structuring voluminous data meant there were a plethora of details to consider. However, I attained my goal by directing my ardent passion for building, testing, and deploying computer programs into an impactful venture to better humanity. Moreover, communicating with 120+ tutors, 500+ parents, and dozens of professors and industry professionals from 12 different countries meant consistent face-to-face conversations were efficient or prone-to-errors. However, by directing years of experience operating South Bay Bay Math circle and delivering coherent organizational updates to tutors, monthly newsletters to parents, and detailed webinar instructions to panelists, I instilled a shared vision amongst others despite geographical separations.
Additionally, working with 70 students with diverse research and academic interests, I had to refamiliarize myself with a wide array of topics and foci. Nonetheless, my limitless curiosity encouraged me to voraciously and proactively consume domain-specific literature and mentor students effectively. As an organization committed to free tutoring for every student, IgniteMinds was self-funded by me. With fundraising not allowed under my VISA status, I had to recruit and inspire tutors on an empathetic and non-monetary basis, which was increasingly challenging under the virtual COVID-19 environment. Nonetheless, by having moved between 5 different cities and countries before moving to California a month after 9th grade started, I learned to adapt and hold friends and family close despite distance and became endeared to the one consistency in my life: an unfettered bond with learning. Coupling these directives, I synthesized compelling organizational stories and recruitment campaigns to encourage involvement.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about IgniteMinds?
Founded in April 2020, IgniteMinds is a student-run educational organization based in California, USA that focuses on providing high-quality education and accessible opportunities to young minds across the world. At IgniteMinds, students work on education outreach, creative projects, and leadership initiatives, making meaningful impacts in their communities. In addition to the research program, IgniteMinds also offers virtual K-12 tutoring, blogs, webinars, seasonal courses, and podcasts. With volunteers from 10+ countries and several domestic and international chapters, IgniteMinds looks to continue to connect and inspire students on a global scale. To join or learn more about the organization, please visit igniteminds.us! Tutoring: IgniteMinds offers FREE academic tutoring in every K-12 subject. With highly skilled tutors, all of whose credentials were verified through a thorough interview and application process, you can rest assured your childrens’ academic futures are in solid hands. Whether you’re trying to prepare them for the upcoming test or looking for thorough, advanced instructors who can guide them towards succeeding in National Olympiads, we’ve got your back. We feature an exception satisfaction rate as you may ascertain from any of our service users and hope to improve our service qualities even more. And did we forget to say: we’re absolutely FREE.
Check out our subject descriptions:
English: Covering elementary to high school, our professional tutors know how to guide your students to literary success, be that becoming a distinguished poet of tomorrow, obtaining perfect SATs, or transforming into a champion in your class. Check out our tutors today!
Math: Covering all levels of math from kindergarten to calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, and partial differential equations, our tutors are reputed game-changers in both the academic and competition phases. Whether you’re looking to ace your next math test or do some careful preparation for the AMC, we’ve got your back! Check out our tutors and book your first session today. We guarantee: you’ll be glad you did!
Science: Looking to qualify for the National Chemistry, Physics, or Biology Olympiads? Maybe you’re interested in becoming a science legend at your school? Look no farther because our tutors have accomplished that and so much more! Book your first session today and step towards unparalleled excellence!
Foreign Languages: In an increasingly globalized society, our ability to poignantly and powerfully communicate has become a quintessential precursor to effective leadership. Whether it be revitalizing a long-lost yet culturally important language at home or kickstarting a phenomenal journey towards becoming a multinational citizen and leader, you’ve come to the right place! Explore our languages and tutor catalog today…
History: A sound understanding of our past has become a fundamental step for guiding the inventions of tomorrow. With tutors familiar with all levels of high school history, including American, European, and World History, you can rest assured your child’s grades are in safe hands! Check out our tutors today.
SAT (Coming Soon!): Let’s face it, test prep can be a long and tedious process—and one that without proper guidance, can send your children down a ceaseless spiral. Nonetheless, with countless perfect and 99 percentile+ scorers in our tutor catalog, we aptly understand the strategies essential to streamlining your learning journey. Don’t let the SAT/ACT remain an elusive test. Join today and give your students the edge they need to transform into perfect scorers today!
Research: With COVID-19 disrupting numerous aspects of life, ranging from a lack of access to educational architectures and research opportunities, IgniteMinds Research was founded as a free structured and guided mentorship program guiding students in navigating novel computational projects. From fine-tuning project ideas to authoring a paper, each student was closely guided on projects ranging from designing novel low-cost ventilators to localizing brain tumors via machine learning. Throughout the program, students had opportunities to gain insights from professors and students from MIT, Stanford, CMU, Brown, UC Berkeley, USC, and Northeastern and industry professionals from Amazon and Khan Academy Medicine. All projects ended with a capstone research presentation at the IgniteMinds 2020 annual conference, a 2-day long event where they competed for publication in the Young Scientists Journal, attended panels with Science Talent Search Finalists and fine-tuned their project ideas through feedback from esteemed judges. Sending 19 students towards publication, IgniteMinds Research was pleased to have an inspiring launching year and is excited about the future!
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
Educational inequality plagues the world. Whether it be during school closures during the pandemic or long-drawn issues like unequal distribution of resources and opportunities between students, this divide continues to grow everyday–and unless acted upon, will likely continue to grow in the future. Educational opportunities are often the only means students have to level the playing field. IgniteMinds aims to play a minor yet ever-important role in bridging these educational gaps. Each one of our staff members ranging from our tutors to our executive board is deeply committed to securing a safer, innovation-ridden, and opportunity-full world for all of our students.
Pricing:
- All services are free
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: https://www.igniteminds.us/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ignitemindspv/?hl=en
