By Sakshi Agarwal (Student Ambassador from India)
This post is part of our World Pitch Recap, and was written by Sakshi A., one of our stellar Student Ambassadors from India! Sakshi generously shared her impressions of the very first event of the week – the welcome party! Hosted at the hotel on the afternoon/evening teams, families and mentors ambassadors arrive, the welcome party is the first time everyone gets to meet each other and start sharing their stories.
August 12, 2019 was the beginning of one of the most spectacular weeks in the lives of all the participating teams, Student and Regional Ambassadors and volunteers! The Welcome Party was held at our hotel, and it was the perfect beginning to a fun-filled week where everyone would get to know each other and become a big, friendly group.
The party started with an introduction to the volunteers and staff (AKA the Heroes) of Technovation and giving us a glimpse into Technovation’s stunning rebrand. Most of the people present at the party knew each other through Slack, email or video calls but it was the very first time we were all physically present in one time zone together!
And so, it only made sense to conduct ice-breaker sessions for everyone to get comfortable and get to know each other superficially, if not thoroughly. I personally felt this exercise to be beyond helpful because I got to interact with not only fellow Student Ambassadors but also the finalist teams who shared their wonderful ideas and regional ambassadors whose smiles and passion were infectious!
Towards the end, all of us shared our thoughts that would inspire us through our journey of change-making and impact creation. This really brought us all together because we realised that irrespective of the communities we represent or the countries we come from, we are all citizens of one world with one motto, to make the world a better place.
The Welcome Party ended with delicious Mexican and partially Italian food, and we couldn’t be more excited for the whole week packed with field-trips to tech giants, panel discussions with industry big shots, the ultimate San Francisco tour and finally the world pitch!
About Sakshi
Sakshi is a 17 year-old Student Ambassador from India. Sakshi participated in Technovation Girls in 2017 and since then has mentored about 100 girls from a rural village in Bangalore. “It has given me immense fulfillment and also a sense of duty towards these girls – it’s our duty as Student Ambassadors to make sure every girl gets a fair chance to showcase her strengths.” In addition to mentoring girls and helping run her local Technovation Girls chapter, Sakshi is an entrepreneur, and hopes to launch multiple startups over the course of her career, constantly innovating and building products to change the world. Sakshi has presented at many tech conferences in India, and spoken at Deloitte. In the long-term, Sakshi told us she wants to be the Education Minister of India, “because our current system is faulty and broken and needs to be fixed. And someone has to take the lead.” After working with Sakshi for the past three years, we don’t doubt her leadership skills.