Unknown16 - Arushi Aggarwal

HAPPY SANKRANTI!!!

“We rise by lifting others.”

~Robert Ingersoll

Hope you all had a great Christmas break and Happy New Year!!!

After a long break from blogging because of projects, tests and holidays I am back with another blog.

We all read a lot of books and watch a lot of movies, but the stories in them are different from what happen in life. In books the author has the control to turn the situation to suit the protagonist. But it’s not so easy in real to take your life in your hands and do exactly what you want to do with it. Today I will introduce you to someone who has stupendously done just that, Arushi Aggarwal the founder and CEO of Unknown16.

Arushi is a multitalented person. She started Unknown16 as a non-profit organization to help kids from all over the world reach education. But before we get there we need to go back to where all of this actually started. In the year 2016, Arushi joined FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). There she realized the gravity of programming. She understood how important it is. So, from then on, she dedicated five hours a day to programming. She started programming simple bots and creating games. Her dedication that started in the very first steps persist even today. She has a true passion and skill for programming and she chose to use it to help people.

But joining FIRST is a bigger part of Arushi’s story than teaching her the importance of programming. There she noticed that there were very few girl participants. She started wondering why this happened. After a little digging, she realized that it was because they lacked proper resources. Arushi felt this shouldn’t be a reason for them to not have a chance to try. She felt that more than 50% of the girls who aspired to join FIRST but couldn’t, would have made a huge difference to their team if they were there. That is what inspired Arushi to start Unknown16 a few years later, to close the gender gap in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

Unknown16 has various free lessons on different programing languages to help children learn coding for free. They also recently conducted a webinar called AI (Artificial Intelligence) in Healthcare.  In the webinar it was discussed how AI can be used in Health Care to help doctors detect potential problems and symptoms before they were actually visible. There are various other uses of AI in Healthcare too if you are interested you can check out the slides shown in the webinar by clicking the link at the end of the blog.    

Along with closing the gender gap, Unknown16 also contributes to the United Nations’ Project called Reboot the Earth. It is social coding event to help fight the current climate crisis. Arushi was also a guest speaker at the UN Climate action Summit.

She also published a book series called Coding Supergirls and the first book under it is called Project: Hackathon which recently became available on amazon. The book is about 3 friends who are passionate programmers. They solve real-world problems using their programming skills. In the first book they start their journey to explore the world of Hackathons.

Arushi’s ardent and benevolent leadership characteristics make Unkown16 what it is today. Her hard work and devotion portray in her work. She is a true inspiration. Her projects and many more new ones to come show her intrepid and daring personality. Looking at her work really makes me feel that age does not matter. She is a Teenpreneur who is just 16. I wish that someday I get the opportunity to meet her in person and learn more about what she does.  

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For those of you who don’t know about RACK YOUR BRAINS- It is a section at the end of every blog that has a random question that you can answer in the comments section below the answer to the question will be there in the next blog. For subscribers the answer of the question will be emailed to you the next day. So, if you have not yet subscribed then please do!!

For those of you who are wondering about the answer (if you did not read last blog and want to know the question first then click here this is the answer-

Neil Armstrong and his groundbreaking achievement that was missing from the question was the fact that he was the first one to land on the moon.  

Coming to this week’s… 

RACK YOUR BRAINS: This woman was born in Warsaw, her father taught mathematics and physics subjects which she pursued in the future. She also played a major role in WW1 and later took an honorable position in Red Cross radiology Service. Who was she?

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Thanks for reading!

See you next time!

Reference links-

·      AI in Healthcare slides 

·      Podcast featuring Arushi Agarwal     

Buy the book