REGIONAL – Three Tri-Valley high school students and their team recently won the Social Innovation Challenge for their creation of a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) metaverse, where participants can experience minority challenges firsthand.
Sia Desale of Dublin High School, Bonisha Maitra of San Ramon High, and Kunal Khaware of Pleasanton’s Quarry Lane School underwent a rigorous application process earlier this year to become Bank of America Student Leaders. Once selected as Student Leaders, Desale, Khaware and Maitra were given paid internships funded by Bank of America. Through this internship, they were also given the opportunity to compete against other teams devising ways to address social issues through entrepreneurial thinking in the Social Innovation Challenge.
During the internship and competition hosted by local nonprofit Junior Achievement of Northen California (JANC) and newsgroup CNBC, the students worked together to create a gamified metaverse — a virtual world in which users “play” and earn points for different activities.
“We designed a virtual space to experience what it feels like to be a minority group, something you wouldn’t typically experience in regular training,” said Desale, a senior at Dublin High.
As a company sponsor of the event, Bank of America staff, along with community nonprofit leaders, selected the three for the Student Leaders program. The students then went through their internship with JANC, and CNBC judged and mentored the Social Innovation Challenge. The decision was based on their leadership experience and participation in school, civic and volunteer activities.
Desale, an animal advocate, founded a homemade soap business called Olivesoap to raise funds for local animal shelters. Since its inception, Olivesoap has grown to include chapters across the country and raised $8,500 to pay for 28,000 animal shelter meals. She said she gained real work experience in the JANC program and looks forward to applying it.
“This program really gave me the opportunity to be a working person and see what it was like working with another nonprofit and gain some skills for being an entrepreneur,” Desale explained. “The experience was amazing. I also made long lasting bonds with my peers, and I made relationships with various companies.”
Maitra, 17, is also a senior. A native of India, she speaks English, Bengali, and Hindi. Maitra founded a global nonprofit called Project Sundar aimed at educating people about the oppression women in India face. She noted that though the selection process for JANC was intense, the results were worth the work.
“Once I got the internship, it was really amazing,” Maitra said, adding she felt much of her high school work has not been applicable to the real world. “Once I started the internship, being a student leader changed my perspective on what I’m doing, and I’m doing things applicable to real life … I love the networking and all the opportunities that come with the networking.”
The oldest of the trio, Khaware graduated from Quarry Lane School in June. He is preparing to begin studies in a joint undergraduate scholarship program between Duke University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill this fall. He speaks English, Hindi and Spanish and has a passion for political activism.
He said the experience of creating the DEI metaverse and presenting it to CNBC with his team was exciting and fun.
“They paired us with some CNBC mentors and the challenge was to address the diversity, equity and inclusion issues within an institution,” Khaware, 18, said. “(In the metaverse), the (player) would be attending meetings and filling out the human resource surveys, and this is more immersive. We pitched it to them, and we actually won the challenge. That was rewarding and the real takeaway is the connection with CNBC, which isn’t necessarily available to other students.”
