2021 Moot Award Recipients

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Shahnawaz believes that community service means, “dedicating my time towards helping others and supporting my community because it is important to me... It’s about connecting with people, helping them obtain experiences, skills and benefits they might not have had access to before.” Shahnawaz’s volunteer work certainly demonstrate the ideals he expresses.

An excellent math and science student, he has been an Algebra and Physics tutor at the CRLS Tutoring Center, and a student teacher at the Broad Institute helping students learn programming in Scratch. As a tutor he went the extra mile for students by being available even after tutoring to help anyone who needed more assistance. 

As an assistant in the Pearl K. Wise Library, he helped other students find books and develop their library skills, inspired by and appreciative of the help he received from volunteers when he first arrived at the school from India and was struggling to learn English. In addition to helping students, he trouble shot problems with the computers and printers, kept the shelves in immaculate condition, trained other library volunteers and developed a simple spreadsheet program for his supervisor to keep track of student’s borrowing. He is described as a “stellar assistant.” 

After reading that over 80% of people on the Autism Spectrum and 90% of people with Down Syndrome never learn how to ride a conventional bicycle, he was deeply moved to volunteer for “I Can Bike- Cambridge”. This program, dedicated to helping children with disabilities how to ride bicycles, he describes as his most meaningful so far. In addition to taking pride in the accomplishments of all the participants, Shahnawaz also formed a special bond with one young boy who was initially afraid to touch a bike but was riding and smiling by the end of the program. 

Shahnawaz plans to study computer science in college, focusing on cybersecurity. His long-range goals are to create a program that will reduce carbon monoxide, lead and other harmful chemicals, and to reduce pollution by producing eco-friendly alternatives to everyday products. And he still plans to teach programming to students for free. 

Faith is passionate about expanding opportuni7es for women and minorities in STEM fields. (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). She organized and ran an STEM camp for fourth and fifth graders, established a partnership between CRLS and the Fletcher-Maynard elementary school to launch a coding club, built a club registration website to make it easier and more equitable for CRLS students to sign up for school clubs, and organized a school-wide COVID hack-a-thon – “Tinker for Change”. The latter was a collaboration between MIT and the CRLS Computer Science Club, of which Faith is the president. The focus of this week-long equity-focused virtual exploratorium was to engage middle and high school students, regardless of experience level who were interested in how to use programming as a catalyst for social change. “My path to STEM started through hands-on opportunities like this, and I want to provide the same opportunity for other kids.” 

Originally from South Carolina with family roots in the Gullah culture, Faith created a “Learn Gullah” app to teach others about the language and culture, and to counter misperceptions of the Gullah people.