Arvav Bedi was struggling with honors pre-calculus last year as a sophomore at Neuqua Valley High School.
“So I went to my parents and they’re originally from India so they learned math and pretty much every subject completely differently. And so they couldn’t really teach it to me and it was too late at night to get a tutor to come over or meet anywhere,” said Bedi. “So they found online tutoring and it was actually pretty expensive it was like an average of like 60 bucks an hour. I did good on the test because of that but I thought ‘what about the kids who don’t have this?’”
And so, he came up with the idea for Powerminds. A free online tutoring service for students 13 and older.
His dad, an IT professional, helped Bedi design the website, but he still needed help getting it off the ground. Bedi met with Mayor Steve Chirico, looking for ideas to help grow the nonprofit.
“So I introduced him to Kamala Martinez who is the executive director of KidsMatter,” said Chirico. “They met and she was very excited about that because it’s just a great other resource to offer families who have that need.”
Now, more than 80 tutors have made themselves available on Powerminds. They offer tutoring in a variety of subjects like science and math, along with other resources like business and counseling advisors.
While Powerminds currently does their own research on their tutors before acceptance, they will currently be instituting background checks as well.
Currently, around 60 students receive tutoring, but Bedi has his sights set much higher.
“I feel like we could get more because it’s a great product we’ve created that could be used by anybody and it’s completely free so why wouldn’t you use it, you know?” said Bedi.
Naperville News 17’s Casey Krajewski reports.
