High School Students’ Computer Science Project Will Help Their Peers Stay Fed

• By Haley Pritchett, TheStatehouseFile.com
• Dec 8, 2021

Students facing food scarcity at Hamilton Southeastern may have a solution to keep from going hungry, thanks to their peers.

On Wednesday during the Nextech CSforGood Showcase at the Indiana Statehouse, sophomores Lakshay Mahajn and Tanishq Thunga from Hamilton Southeastern and Sid Songirklar from Carmel placed first for their computer science project.

Students Lakshay Mahajn and Tanishq Thunga from Hamilton Southeastern and Sid Songirklar from Carmel placed first for their computer science project. They aimed to solve hunger in their school.

Titled HSE Shelter, it takes donations to schools that have previously gone unused and puts them on a website. Students then can go in and select what items would be beneficial to them and set up a time to pick them up at school.

Mahajn says there is a lot of negative stigma around asking for help. Their website is designed to eliminate stigma, yet ensure food doesn’t go to waste. More importantly, however, the boys do not want students going home hungry.

“We want to help connect those students in need,” he said, “because there’s a bunch of students that don’t ask teachers for help because they’re too embarrassed.”

Hamilton Southeastern and Carmel high school students hear feedback from judges. The students won first place.

Thunga said that they came up with the idea when they found out that one of their good friends was heavily impacted by food insecurity, he was too afraid to tell them at first. Their computer science teacher, Julie Alano, said that this issue is something that deeply affects their school.

“Most people wouldn’t think there will be a problem at our school, but there is,” she said.

Songirklar believes that food insecurity will be an even greater issue for schools in the future. According to Feeding Indiana’s Hungry, 15% of Indiana’s population struggles with food insecurity.

“Currently, all lunches are free, right?” he said. “So you don’t really see this problem now, but when we go back to where it’s only going to be reduced-funding lunches, that’s when you’ll start seeing the problem pop back up again.”

The boys plan to hand over the website to their school and help launch it next semester. They even have started a club at Hamilton Southeastern to help them perfect the website.

Dr. Katie Jenner, Indiana Secretary of Education, applauded the youth in the room who had utilized computer science skills to find solutions to issues at their school.

“Keep up the great work, maintain your curiosity about the world around you, and keep an eye on how you can use your unique skills and perspective to make the world a better place,” she said.

FOOTNOTE: Haley Pritchett is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.