Venture: POWAN
Seed Lab Cohort: 2021/2022
Impact location: Inland Empire, California
Organization structure: Nonprofit
IDEA & ENTERPRISE OVERVIEW:
Advocate for equitable education through a variety of free e-learning solutions designed and delivered by college students.
POWAN Initiative was founded in 2020 to assist low-income students, especially Black and Latinx, who were struggling academically during the Covid-19 pandemic by connecting them to vetted tutors who are experienced college students. It provides customized programs such as tutoring, mentoring, college assistance, programming bootcamps, and other academic solutions to K-12 students. Since the inception of the pandemic, POWAN provided ongoing, mid-long term education support to over 80 students.
PERSONAL BIO
Ankita Ahluwaia is the co-founder and Executive Director of POWAN Initiative. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Ankita was dedicating her time exploring solutions meant to support K-12 students from communities of color that historically have limited access to supplemental educational resources, tutoring, and enriching activities. As COVID-19 unexpectedly changed the way students access education, Ankita took matters into her own hands and started offering individual and group STEM tutoring lessons to students in her community. As the demand quickly increased and her network of STEM college students offered their support, she decided to found POWAN as a nonprofit organization.
A resident of Irvine, Southern California, Ankita is a Computer Science and Business student at University of California Riverside.
