In early October, SCET was excited to host 18 high school students from The Purpose Academy in India.

These students came to SCET to build their entrepreneurship skills and pitch their social impact projects through mock pitches to Cal students, faculty and alumni.

The student’s projects focused on rural Indian communities and ranged from organic farming, women’s small business creation, clean water technology, micro-loans and many other innovative ideas.

While developing their projects, many of the students were able to raise funding, network to make vital connections, and learn first-hand how to pitch their ideas through trial and error.

1st place winner: Project Auxilia (Krish Gangaraju, Aneesh Mamidi, Dia Reddy, and Harini Gadiraju in absentia) was awarded the judges top choice at the pitch event. Their team addressed health issues, including tuberculosis and diarrhea, in the village of Mandalaparru in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. As a form of preventive healthcare, they provide clean drinking water by installing a water filtration unit in the village school and are also developing a real-time water testing service using a low-cost sensor and app.

2nd place winner: Verushka Pandey,  Empowering rural healthcare workers

3rd place winners: Anirud Mantha and Abhiram Alluri, Organic farming

The students also sat in on several SCET classes, toured campus, and hiked the Big C.

We look forward to hearing how all of their great ideas progress in the next few months!

“I had never completely grasped the idea of a purpose being more than just what you are good at and paid for. Looking at your purpose as a way of combining what you love and what the world needs was eye-opening and completely unique to what we had learned before. “

Aarushi Singh, 9th grade Purpose Academy student