We had the good fortune of connecting with Srisindhu Medukonduru and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Srisindhu, can you talk to us a bit about the social impact of your business?
Many children coming from underserved backgrounds normally do not lead careers pertaining to STEM and essentially, they become a minority group in these fields due to their lack of proper resources and lesser quality education facilities. Our team wants to deal with this issue by inspiring an interest in STEM and learning for these children of lower socioeconomic status in our own creative ways to help them make their education a priority, despite their circumstances. Our non-profit is a youth-led 501(c)(3) registered nonprofit that seeks to help make an impact on children of lower socioeconomic status such as ones living in homeless shelters, foster homes, domestic abuse homes, and rural, underserved areas.When it comes to working with children, we create short children’s books with our own stories and illustrations that feature a child overcoming a certain struggle in order to get into a career in STEM. With the stories, we read them to young kids in order to stimulate an interest in education, and we implement hands-on creative, engaging activities as we work with kids to further develop that interest in STEM education. In addition, we organize awareness campaigns to educate communities and host fundraisers to raise money to support these children financially in order to help them whilst forging their own educational paths. In addition to donations, we work in offering care packages to these underserved communities as well. We truly are committed to helping give back to those less fortunate, and your support would be greatly appreciated. We partner with homeless shelters, foster homes, and other statewide organizations to primarily work with less fortunate one-on-one, and would work primarily in the North Texas area. However, we do seek to offer assistance to any individuals who would like to start a chapter for this non-profit on their own in their respective region. We have created engaging social media posts promoting our initiatives, and a podcast featuring coordinators of shelters that can provide detailed advice to support underserved kids.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Something that makes our non-profit different from other educational institutions is that we specifically want to focus on underprivileged adolescents during a time of when these children experience great mental and financial instability. We do so by taking a creative approach through making our own children’s books and implementing different kinds of STEM enrichment activities. We have so far been able to work one-on-one with thousands of kids but also inspire multiple domestic and international chapters with the help of other NGO’s, non-profits and sponsors. It was definitely a challenging process when it came to out-reach and being able to actually get in contact with shelters but through continuous follow-ups, we were able to coordinate volunteering events where we used our social media to be able to get more people interested in working with us.We also have been able to partner with several shelters who want to count working on helping us make an impact, and we have partnered up with international volunteers and people beyond Texas to start their own chapters of our organization, and most of the kids we have been able to support internationally are located in rural areas lacking proper educational funds. We also do have a ‘Donate” and a “Get Involved” page where people who support our cause can send money or make an impact through our organization. Any help towards an underserved child matters, and they especially need this due to their mental and financial instability.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
The Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden is a must see location in the DFW is one of the country’s premier children’s education programs with amazing natural sights. The Dallas Zoo also is an amazing place especially for kids to check out animals not even native to the region, in addition to the Dallas World Aquarium. The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza is a must see because this museum chronicles the life, assassination, and legacy of President John F. Kennedy. Located in the former Texas School Book Depository, it provides a thorough and moving look at this pivotal moment in American history. In addition, the Dallas Museum of Art is one of the largest art museums in America, it houses a vast collection spanning 5,000 years of history, including everything from ancient artifacts to contemporary works. And lastly, the Perot Museum of Nature and Science is a great place for families, this museum features interactive exhibits on topics ranging from dinosaurs to space exploration.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I would like to give a shout-out to Lead The Ways, an organization dedicated to building educational structures and bathrooms for underserved children in India

Website: https://www.stemstarsliteracyfoundation.org

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stemstarsliteracyfoundation?igsh=NjgybnptdDE2Mjk2&utm_source=qr

Linkedin: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61560854960992

Image Credits
STEMstars Literacy Foundation

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