Kavi Dolasia co-founded Reaching Out with Robotics to increase technology literacy for underserved youth. Her program brings hands-on robotics education to disadvantaged children, students of color, and girls — groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math).

The program also reaches students with disabilities and the elderly. Over the past five years, Reaching Out with Robotics has impacted more than 4,000 students through weekly classes, monthly workshops, and STEM fairs.

High school mentors visit middle schools, public libraries, and Boys and Girls Clubs to teach engineering and computer science basics through robotics. Kavi has grown her program into eight chapters across California and is working to expand further. Her sponsors include the National Center for Women & Information Technology (supported by Apple, Bank of America, Microsoft, and Google) and Disney Friends for Change.

Kavi fell in love with STEM as a sixth grader, one of just four girls on her school’s robotics team of 30 students. A year later, she joined her older sister in investigating why nearly all students in her high school STEM classes had attended one of the area’s two middle schools (Mill Valley), and not the other (Bayside). The girls found that 89% of students at Bayside were socio-economically disadvantaged, compared to just 7.9% at Mill Valley. The two middle schools’ vastly different test scores reflected the disparity. Kavi and her sister decided to start a weekly STEM club at Bayside — and Reaching Out with Robotics was born. Six years later, their annual robotics competition at Bayside showcases the STEM gains students there have made. Bayside is currently part of the first California school desegregation order in half a century. “The impact of my program has taught me that grassroots action can be a catalyst for tangible, lasting change,” says Kavi. “Every Monday when I walk into Bayside to teach robotics and see the triumphant smiles of students troubleshooting code, it gives me hope.”

Kavi Gandhi directs the Yash Gandhi Foundation and in three years, has raised more than $460,000 to help find a cure for I-Cell, a rare, genetic childhood disease.

The foundation honors his older brother Yash, who passed away from I-Cell just shy of his ninth birthday, when Kavi was in first grade. The boys’ parents established the foundation in 2001, the only one in the world focused solely on I-Cell funding. They’d built a small circle of supporters but in 2016, told Kavi they planned to dissolve the foundation. Dismayed, he reflected for several days and then told his parents he wasn’t going to let that happen – that he wanted to revive the foundation and do the work himself.

She worked nearly every weekend collecting signatures for her petition and talking with legislators and mayors across the state. The petition has been introduced as two bills that will soon be signed into law.

Madhvi’s statewide campaign builds on her success petitioning her Denver-area school district to replace Styrofoam lunch trays with sustainable ones. She worked for months to gather signatures and then brought her petition and idea to the district superintendent. He set up a task force and asked Madhvi to help lead it. She attended and spoke at all of the task force’s meetings for nearly a year. In September 2019, the Jeffco Public School district — with 86,000 students across 155 schools — made the switch to compostable paper lunch trays. The move will eliminate 7.6 million Styrofoam trays from the landfill each year. A nature and animal enthusiast, Madhvi first became aware of plastic pollution in first grade, when she learned of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. By age 7, she’d written and published a book called Is Plastic My Food? to educate her peers about the problem. “I’ve learned that making change takes time and requires patience,” says Madhvi. “But I know that through persistence and determination, I can create change on a large scale, even though I am young.”