Mudit Tyagi '88 and Amy Karon '95

Mudit Tyagi and Amy Karon send best wishes to the UWC community from their home in Madison, Wisconsin, where they live with their two cats and two dogs. Mudit has been working in Bay Area technology start-ups since 1997. Amy recently received a Master of Public Health and is currently finishing her final year of veterinary school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Disturbed by inequalities in access to opportunities, Mudit and Amy devised a plan to help children from impoverished communities reach their first non subsistence job. The program is called Equal Access to Opportunity (EATO), and you can read about it online at http://www.eato.org. On a trip to India, the two visited the Mahindra United World College of India (MUWCI), which is situated in the beautiful hills of the Sahyadri mountain range. The valley below the College has several impoverished villages populated by landless rural laborers and subsistence-level farmers with very small parcels of land. Encouraged by MUWCI headmaster David Wilkinson and inspired by the tenacity of the local village children, Mudit and Amy decided to set up Akshara, an EATO-powered program at MUWCI that supplements village students’ education via a comprehensive and intensive after school tutoring program. After one year of tutoring with Akshara, the first class of village students took their SSC 10th grade board examination. Their scores were significantly higher than any class in recent memory. Three of these students have now joined the MUWCI community, and with Akshara’s support, the others are seeking advanced vocational training. Akshara’s commitment is to support each students’ education until their first non-subsistence job.

Akshara functions as a partnership between village parents, students, and a very dedicated local team led by Dr. Harsha Joshi. Mudit and Amy feel very thankful and blessed for the support and guidance they received from friends and family that have enabled Akshara to flourish. The Akshara family invites you to visit with them in India, where you can learn and teach the children. Mudit and Amy invite you to visit them in Madison if you are ever in the Midwest.

(This profile appeared previously in the Fall 2006 Kaleidoscope)