Each year the TRHS Foundation provides scholarships for four students to participate in the Business Horizons program, which is a program of the Iowa Association of Business and Industry Foundation. It is a weeklong innovation simulation to get a better sense of how strengths and skills connect to the business world and the real world.
Students (grades 9-12) from across the state attend for 5 days to explore career opportunities and immerse themselves in a unique, hands-on working environment with their peers. The program has enjoyed more than 35 years of success in Iowa, and over 5,000 students have taken advantage of the Business Horizons experience.
This past Monday, we were lucky enough to have one of our scholarship students join us at our monthly meeting. Shreeya Yarlagadda will be a sophomore this year at Roosevelt and Central Campus, but that doesn't mean she hasn't already made change in her community and around the world.
When she is not diligently preparing for a Geography Bee or analytically collaborating with her Robotics team, you can find Shreeya fundraising for children’s and women’s rights in rural India. So far 75,000 educational hours were provided to 375 adolescent girls to fight child marriages and apply computer skills for jobs and more. To read more about Shreeya's changemaking project, click here.
Shreeya has an inherent instinct to give back to her community. Through the Business Horizons program she was able to develop her leadership and business skills and create a way to further her work as a changemaker in the field of mental health. Shreeya and her team created an app/website called AVATALK.
AVATALK was created to connect youth to safe mental health support:
Multiple subscriptions to personalize options
Completely anonymous
Troll-free due to advanced AI tech and human moderators
Users can get access to communicate with others users, teachers, parents, and even therapists depending on who they want to talk to
Short questionnaire to match users with 2-3 people with the same problems so that they can freely talk to each other
We believe Shreeya's future is bright and we cannot wait to see what she accomplishes. The Foundation will be here to support her every step of the way! To connect or stay up to date with Shreeya, see below.
Shreeya Yarlagadda
Sophomore @ Roosevelt / Central Academy
projectlifeskills17@gmail.com
