Lincoln East junior wins national community youth volunteer award

Code for Change is the name of the state-wide organization that Pranav Rajan co-founded last year, "It's a computer science education organization which attempts to teach computer science in a new modern way.

This 17 year old saw a problem and he aimed to fix it, "I felt as if something that I was facing in school was the lack of one, the cross-application of skills that we learned in school and then two, the true usefulness of what we were learning and I felt as if that wasn't exactly concretely highlighted in the classes."

Pranav feels as though this award validates all of the efforts he has put into building Code for Change, "Even my parents, they've seen me put into so much of this organization, sacrificing time from academics and studying for standardized testing. I think it really shows that what I'm doing here is important. And for a long time that it was just me that knew that and I feel as if this award is able to expand that knowledge to other individuals as well."

Thirty Lincoln students were involved in the initial internship program-- but beginning in may, the Code for Change summer program will include students from all across the state of Nebraska.