Village of Dreams Celebrates Quarry Lane Seniors: Ananya Padmanabhan and Dhruv Iyer

Dhruv Iyer and Anaya Padmanabhan are recently graduated seniors at Quarry Lane School in Dublin, California. They have shown excellent academic achievement, alongside strong commitments to community service. Their work reflects innovation and leadership, influencing everything form local communities to international initiatives. Ananya joined the Village of Dreams in 9th grade, and is now headed to Georgia Tech’s Computer Engineering program, one of the country's top programs. Dhruv, a member of The Village Of Dreams since the 7th grade, is beginning his studies in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.

The Village of Dreams is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. It was founded on the belief of “kids helping other kids”, and aims to remove any barriers that block a student’s path to empowerment and success. Ananya and Dhruv are the best examples of this mission. Most notably, they led Project STEAMBOT, a global STEAM education initiative. Through Project STEAMBOT, Ananya and Dhruv created a completely free Udemy course about robotics, using the LEGO® BOOST kit, reaching 1,000+ students in over 100 countries. More than a digital project, it was a hands-on movement. Ananya led robotics sessions in person at Harbor House in Oakland, teaching underprivileged kids, and watching them grow into confident individuals as they built robots. Dhruv spread the program internationally to students in rural India, by teaching over Zoom. 

Their leadership did not just stop at robotics but also conducted a lot of fundraising. One example was the Holiday Gift Drive, where Ananya and Dhruv led the Quarry Lane’s Village of Dreams chapter in organizing yearly drives for teens at Shepherd's Gate. Shepherd's Gate is a shelter for women and children struggling with homelessness and domestic violence. Teenagers are often overlooked in holiday gifting, so by focusing on them, Dhruv and Ananya were able to provide joy during difficult times. Another example is the African Library Project, where Dhruv and Ananya led a project to collect 2,000 books and raise $1,000. These were enough to establish 3 new libraries in Kenya and Malawi, which will help generations of students across multiple communities.

The two have a notable combination of leadership, empathy and outstanding technical skills. Their admission into Georgia Tech and Carnegie Mellon, some of the most competitive programs in the country, is a testament of their academic excellence and the impact they had. The experiences of Ananya Padmanabhan and Dhruv Iyer are not only personal successes, but an illustration of the impact of youth service and innovation. Their contributions have sparked coding literacy for students in Oakland, robotics learning for students in India, and provided educational resources for communities in Africa. Their work shows how this wonderful organization works to empower kids to help kids. We would like to thank Dhruv and Ananya as they prepare to enter their educational journeys at Carnegie Mellon and Georgia Tech.