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Two Indian American bag State Department Awards
By siliconindia
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Friday, 27 May 2011, 21:01 IST
Bangalore: State Department Award is one of the most prestigious awards by U.S. government, and two American Indians students Aparajit Sriram and Avanti Dabholkar, have bagged it for creating a website named "Cultural Diplomacy With the Muslim World" for its 2011 Doors to Diplomacy Award.
Aparajit Sriram and Avanti Dabholkar, both are 12th grade students of Plainsboro High School North in Plainsboro, New Jersey. Each student member of the two winning Doors to Diplomacy Award teams will receive a $2,000 scholarship and the winning coaches will each receive a $500 cash award. The website explores the role that culture plays in international diplomacy.
Participants ranged in age from 11 to 18, included 341 student teams from 30 countries.The event was also co-sponsored by Global SchoolNet.
Aparaajit was born in Bahrain, lived parts of his childhood in Singapore and Mumbai, India. However, finally they end up settling in the U.S. His volatile life journey in India and aboard has ushered him huge experience and exposure towards the diversity of the world's cultures and societies. Each has its own distinctive political and artistic qualities. Singapore showed him order and systematization, Mumbai showed him urban clutter, chaos, and charisma.
Soon he will be traveling to Turkey to learn Turkish as part of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs' NSLI-Y language exchange program! He is immensely excited about being a vehicle of Cultural Diplomacy!
On the other hand Avanti is an aspiring architect who one day hopes to contribute to her surroundings through her work; Avanti will join a university architecture program in the coming fall.
She is the design half of these Doors to Diplomacy team and contributed her skills in design and organization to pull together this educational website.