Leading actor and producer, Priyanka Chopra has chosen Avanti Fellows as the charity of choice to benefit from the RAD Impact award that she was bestowed with. Cultural icons, who empower their advocacy to help create an impact for their charities are awarded this RAD Impact award, which also invites the public to get involved. Each of the five inaugural RAD IMPACT recipients this year selected an honoree to share their award with and a charity to benefit from their award. Their charity will receive an impact donation to fund a project that furthers its mission through direct impact for others.
Priyanka Chopra and her honoree Devishi Jha, a youth climate justice activist, who advocates for girls’ education have chosen Avanti Fellows, a social education enterprise in India, as a charity to help support 500 bright young women across rural India with tablets to access STEM learning programs and pursue careers in engineering and medicine. Avanti Fellows, a non-profit organization in India provides students across India with equitable access to high-quality colleges and professional growth that will create a stable career.
Avanti Fellows has helped talented students from low-income families from rural India qualify into India’s best undergraduate STEM programs over the last decade. They run online live classes for test prep and enable public school systems to create technology-enabled blended learning programs to improve achievement levels in Mathematics and Science from Grade 9 to 12. They work with over 20,000 girl students in government schools in grades 9-12 from low-income families in 21 States (out of 28) and 4 Union Territories (out of 8) in India.
Speaking at the award ceremony, Priyanka Chopra said, “It’s taken for granted in many parts of the world, what a girl can do with an education. It’s such an obscure thought. I think it has to do with equality. It’s a part of that to be able to fight for equality, to be able to fight for equal opportunity. I think that all of those things collectively over time will lend for girls being able to have more access to education.”
Speaking of the impact donation, Akshay Saxena, cofounder Avanti Fellows said, “It is wonderful to see interest and support for now a decade’s worth of work and this gives us energy in these uncertain times to work harder and help more. The grant will help us provide devices to our incredible girl students, who are aspiring to become doctors, engineers and leaders.”
