Maher Adoni won first prize in an essay competition hosted by India Philanthropic Alliance.
Maher Adoni is a teenager with a lot of ideas, especially on the education front.
The Illinois teenager’s passion for education was triggered during one of his family’s visits to Andhra Pradesh, India, where his grandmother runs a school. He was appalled by the low standard of education and pitiful infrastructure of schools in rural India.
For Adoni, these visits every year were more than just summer vacations. They were telling experiences, juxtaposed to the everyday privileges he had in his own schooling life.
Adoni is convinced that only way the standard of education can be brought up is by democratizing the system.
He argued the same in a powerful essay, which won first prize in a competition hosted by the India Philanthropic Alliance, a coalition of nonprofit, philanthropic and charitable organizations. “The playing field is skewed, and those in rural India are suffering,” he wrote.
“There would be the kids entering the school walking barefoot, with dusted-up uniforms. I overheard working-class families in my grandmother’s office—tearfully explaining why they couldn’t pay tuition,” he wrote in the prize-winning essay.
Speaking to the American Bazaar, this past weekend, from his home in Urbana-Champaigne, Illinois, he saw the inner workings of the system and experienced the depravity of the situation at a middle school in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, in southern India, where his grandmother was a headmaster (principal).
While his essay argues for the democratization of the Indian education system, Adoni acknowledges the United States’ far from perfect education system and believes many of the same basic principles should be applied to education here as well.
Just as it is in the case of India, Adoni said “One of the major problems that bar people from equal education here in the United States is the access to internet and learning resources on the internet.”
While he was privileged enough to have internet access, Adoni said growing up he witnessed firsthand some of the struggles his friends went through, having to go out of their way to get an internet connection to complete schoolwork.
The high school senior believes that making sure everyone has equal widespread use and access to a reliable internet connection is the next step forward to achieving education equality. “As we go forward everything we do in life, especially education, is tied to that [internet], so getting universal connection is the number one thing.”
Adoni received a grant of $1,000 grant for the prize-winning essay.
He donated the amount to the American India foundation, a organization that has been doing philanthropic work in India since 2001. “I appreciate the work they do with education and development in India,” he said. “It aligns with values I talked about in my essay which stood out to me.”
Discussing his future, Adoni, a high school senior, said he has plans of going to med school. He has heard back from a couple schools in Illinois. For now, the teenager is inclined to attend University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, the town where he grew up.
The Indian Philanthropic Alliance, which has a mission of mobilizing people and funding in the United States (and elsewhere) for development and poverty-reduction programs in India, is hosting the second essay competition this year.
The topic is the most significant issue facing India and its people today and the role individuals and groups in the US can play in being a part of the solution.
The winners, runners-up, and finalists will be selected by a panel of philanthropy experts in two age cohorts.