- A Bridge for Cultural Exchange
- Bitten by the Web Design Bug
- Student's Persistence Leads to Victory
- Forming Friendships Across Time Zones
- A Quest that Ends in Reward
- Teamwork Hatches Award-Winning Site
- Reflections from a First-Time Coach
- Raising Awareness of an Environmental Emergency
- Making a World of Difference in AIDS Education
- Don't Know Much About Biotechnology?
High School Student Makes a World of Difference in AIDS Education
At age 14, Ammu Irivinti assembled an international team of students to create an award-winning website about the politics of AIDS drugs for the April 2004 ThinkQuest competition. This September, Ammu traveled to San Francisco with her ThinkQuest teammates to receive a First Place award for their website, "Patent Wars on AIDS Drugs." For the first time, she met face-to-face with the other teens who had become her good friends.
Ammu first learned of ThinkQuest through a friend of her mother's. Passionate about educating people about AIDS, Ammu saw the website competition as a new way to make an impact on the AIDS crisis and hoped to build a team that would coalesce around this idea. She first invited Vidhyarth Hariharan, a Texas student whom she had met at a national youth leadership conference, to join the effort. She also contacted her cousin in India, Kalanidheesh Medavaram, who she knew could be counted on for excellent research and writing skills. The rest of the international team she assembled from students who had left comments in the forum on her own personal website dedicated to AIDS education.
Ammu's interest in AIDS began with a minor incident that turned traumatic. One day on the school playground, she fell from the monkey bars and scraped her forehead on the gravel below. That day changed her life. At age 8, Ammu Irivinti became convinced she would die of AIDS when her young friend, seeing the blood from the graze, remarked with conviction, "You have AIDS."
Those words traumatized Ammu. At the time, the only thing Ammu knew about AIDS was that if she did have it, she would die. When Ammu's mother picked her up from school that day, she wiped away the tears and explained the facts about AIDS contraction. Ammu realized that other children might also be misinformed and was inspired to take action, developing a rudimentary website to educate children about AIDS. By age 12, the site was quite sophisticated, allowing student interaction.
"I thought that if more people do something constructive, we can solve this issue. There are 6,000 site visits each month, which is very, very satisfying. It's rewarding to know that the effort is making people understand AIDS better. I believe that education and knowledge are the keys to solving these problems, like AIDS and poverty in developing countries," says Ammu, who has received a commendation from President Bush.
With her experience in creating websites, Ammu was naturally interested in the ThinkQuest competition, although a bit daunted. "I'd never attempted a competition like this before. But mostly, I was really excited. It was an adventure. I enjoyed leading the team, even though I had never done this internationally and without seeing them in person. The time differences were definitely a major barrier, but we managed with online chat, email and an occasional phone call."
The emails back and forth weren't all work though. Laughter also brought the team together, as members got to know one another's cultures and perspectives. "Trying to talk at 4 am was always awkward and sometimes amusing. The world is hilarious at 4 am. Elise in New Castle, Australia, asked me one morning, 'Do all Americans think Aussies have koalas and kangaroos in their backyards?' I responded, 'From Saturday morning cartoons, it's my impression a lot of people think that.' Then in deadpan she added, 'But don't you?'"
The most rewarding moments came when Ammu allowed herself to just sit back and look at the outstanding website that the team had created. "The project was collaborative. It was a focal point. It brought us together, and we created it with friends whom we had never met in person. I feel as if I had known them for a very long time and together we're proud of what we accomplished."
Besides new web development skills and knowledge about the politics of AIDS drugs, working on the "Patent Wars" site taught Ammu that cultural barriers aren't barriers at all. "They can be overcome. They don't even really exist. You can work with anyone regardless of religion and race when you see that we are all people going for the same thing. That was the most valuable thing I learned."
After completing the "Patent Wars" site, Ammu's response was "When can I do this again?" So when an Indonesian student who had visited her AIDS website invited her to join a team for the next competition, Ammu jumped at the chance. The result? The new team won Third Place in the October 2004 competition with "Coffee: All Ground Up." "It was interesting with 'Coffee' to pick a topic as a team—a topic I really knew nothing about—and then to build a research site together. The experience opened my mind and I realized that many things can be interesting if you give them a chance."
Ammu looked forward to meeting the members of both of her winning teams in person at the ThinkQuest Live celebration in September. "I feel like I have known them my entire life. We haven't even stopped being in touch. When we see each other [on-line] we instant message each other and we still email."
Ammu's contributions to those affected by AIDS go beyond her ThinkQuest work. She has helped raise more than $85,000 for children and young mothers with AIDS and was one of 50 students invited to speak at the United Nations on issues of poverty and disease facing the world. She is also a recipient of the New Centenary Award, co-presented by her school, Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire, and the Ramakrishna Mission, in recognition of the funds she has raised and the volunteer time she has devoted to children in the Mission's orphanage.
"There is so much talent among young people, so much they can accomplish. I'd like to see them enjoying and participating in competitions like ThinkQuest, helping to build awareness and create solutions."
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