Nord Anglia Education, a premium international schools group, has collaborated with UNICEF, to invest over US$290,000 in student-led social impact projects, as part of its education strategy to help students develop their sense of purpose and global citizenship, as they create and lead community impact initiatives.

Aashray Mathai, a high school student at Oakridge International School and founder of social organization MPowerEd, has been awarded the highest honor of this year’s Research & Development Grant from Nord Anglia Education. His team’s app idea that could mimic a tutor and help underprivileged students master concepts on their own with personalized learning plans and assessments, clinched this award.

Aashray Mathai has been working with underprivileged children for the past two years, tutoring them to better understand the concepts being taught at school. He realized the need to do more to help these students and teamed up with three more students, Niva Barde, Additi Singhi, and Teerth Srivastava, to come up with the idea of an AI-based app that could explain concepts in their mother tongue, help translate their textbooks and homeworks, and aid in learning English innovatively, so the children can be self-reliant with individualised learning.

On receiving news of this award, an elated Aashray Mathai quoted ‘We really appreciate this recognition. This grant will help us develop the app and procure the devices for deployment. We are sure that with this grant, we can start to make a positive and measurable impact educating underprivileged children’.

The app will be deployed to the local slums, while monitoring progress of the students centrally. They also plan to roll it out to the government schools so they can budget their staffing resources, as the app can take on some of their teaching responsibilities.