Akshaya is a junior at Metea Valley High School and a Journalist Intern for OLI Gardens, who takes part in a variety of community oriented activities. At Metea Valley, Akshaya enjoys being Conference Director for Model UN, Director of Activism for JSA, and also participating in National Spanish Honors Society, and Art Club. She volunteers at Rush Copely Medical Center and with her dance school. In her free time, she loves to paint, dance, and hang out with family and friends. Akshaya always takes pride in being a part of the improvement of her community and school, and is always open to learning more.

Adhvaith is a senior at Metea Valley High School. He is passionate about many different subjects. As for business, he is a part of the Business Professionals of America, where he competed at the national level and got third place in the nation in the SQL Server event. He is also invested in math, as he is the captain of the Metea Math Team. He thoroughly enjoys many hobbies, such as reading and Rubik's Cubing, where he lead a club and hosts summer camps to teach kids how to solve Rubik's Cube. He also plays the saxophone, competes on a robotics team and plays tennis and cricket. He is extremely grateful to be a part of this organization and strives to do his part in eliminating food insecurity.

Ria Mishra is currently a junior at Metea Valley High School. She is passionate about helping others and making a difference in the community. She serves as secretary of the Kids Matter Senior High Board, event planner for the Animal Rescue and Rehabilitation Club, member of the Principal Advisory Board, member of Student Government, a member of the Metea Speech Team, and a member of the National French Honors Society. Outside of school, she enjoys playing the piano, painting, traveling, volunteering as a History Connecter at Naper Settlement, and tutoring kids for the Odisha Society of America. Having lived in India as a child, Ria has witnessed food insecurity, and thus, she aspires to help
bring about change in the world. Ria is looking forward to working with the Obama Legacy Initiative to truly make a positive impact in our society and strive towards a better and healthier future for everyone.

Parv Singhal is a rising senior at Metea Valley High School. He serves as the Tech Chair on the Executive Board of Key Club International's Illinois-Eastern Iowa District. He has also been a Key Club member since his freshman year, volunteering for over 100 hours. Over the last several years, he has taught himself to code in Python, Java, C++, HTML, and JavaScript, and he is also involved in numerous robotics camps at Metea, where he serves as both a mentor and a programmer for his own team. He enjoys playing racquet sports such as ping pong and badminton in his leisure time. He is thrilled to be a part of the OLI family and is looking forward to an exciting journey!

I am a junior at Metea Valley High School. I do track at my school and love playing volleyball in my free time. I want to self-explore my interests and myself. I plan to go to college and pursue my career in an engineering field.

Arnav Bhasin is going to be a senior at Metea Valley High School and is a motivated intern involved with OLI: Gardens. He is a part of the Speech Team, Math Team, Music Honors Society, and a variety of other clubs at his high school. Outside of school, he enjoys spending time with friends and family, programming, playing table tennis, and watching basketball. He hopes to enter the field of computer science and/or applied mathematics after high school. After seeing just how severe food insecurity has become in the Chicagoland area and in places around the world, through his writing skills, Arnav hopes to educate others on the widespread socioeconomic impacts that food insecurity has and how it facilitates a cycle of poverty that damages all future generations.

“Looking forward to working collaboratively alongside likeminded peers to achieve a common goal”

Zara enjoys playing soccer, baking/cooking, and crafting or creating. She is passionate about giving back to others and embracing generosity, and she values productivity, responsibility, and respect. Zara strives to promote the importance of healthy lifestyles and fresh food to younger generations across our communities through OLI. She is thrilled to be part of such a rewarding organization and talented team and is excited to see what OLI Gardens will accomplish this year!

Prithvi is going to be a senior at Metea Valley High School. At Metea, he is involved with BPA, Key Club, Math Team, and Varsity Tennis. He is chasing his dream to be a computer science engineer. Prithvi is currently an intern for the website and graphic design team.

Kushal is a rising sophomore at Metea Valley High School. He is a part of Vex Robotics, the Math Team, as well as the Orexian Foundation. In his free time, Kushal likes to spending time with family and friends, biking, and playing Clarinet. In the past, he has volunteered at kids against hunger, which motivated him to become an intern at OLI Gardens. As an intern, Kushal hopes to apply his skills in order to spread awareness about food insecurity and help those in need throughout the community.

Shivani Jambunathan is a sophomore at Metea Valley, and is part of the Media team at OLI. Outside of OLI, she can be found running, playing soccer, reading, and volunteering. She plays the cello and participates on the speech team at her school. Shivani is excited to create content for OLI, and help eradicate food insecurity on her community!

Sailesh Senthilkumar is a senior at Metea Valley High School. He is pursuing to become a a computer science engineer. During the pandemic, Sailesh dedicated his time focusing on his music and distributing them to all platforms. He built up his brand name across all streaming platforms and have created a steady and passive income through his music. At Metea, he leads the Ted Ed Club that enables students to expand their knowledge and express themselves through the organization TED. Sailesh is also involved in the school’s varsity tennis team and partakes in many USTA tournaments that gave him a Universal Tennis Ranking (UTR) of 6.86. Outside of his school life, he is takes part in the Sri Lankan Tamil Student Association (STSA), where students make music and lead projects to spread and preserve the language Tamil across the country. Sailesh, along with STSA members, has led many projects that brought fundings over 5,000 dollars which went towards helping many Tamil schools in Sri Lanka. In his spare time, he watches Netflix Originals, practices guitar, or scroll through Tik Tok. Sailesh, just like everyone else, used to waste a lot of food and didn’t think it would have an effect, but the pandemic brought out many movements, especially the farming and food movements like the Punjab farming movement, which changed Sailesh’s perspective on food waste. That’s when he found OLI from his fellow STSA member and was thrilled to work with his fellow interns to eliminate food insecurities and spread the knowledge of the effects of food wastage.

Sarina Saleem is a sophomore at Metea Valley. She is part of MVHS’s speech, robotics, and varsity tennis team. In her free time, she enjoys reading and creating calligraphy art. On OLI, she is a part of the technology team.