As a junior at Johns Creek’s Northview High two years ago, Sahit Mamidipaka was fascinated with social psychology, the study of how people interact. So he founded a club to meet with others who shared his interest.
“I wanted to create something so my friends and I could build a community for ourselves,” he said. “I contacted the psychology teacher, who thought it was a great idea. So we began meeting every month.”
Mamidipaka also filed the required paperwork to establish the Northview group as a formal offshoot of the Psi Alpha High School National Honor Society in Psychology and served as its president. Members met to review journal articles, catch up on the latest news of the discipline and hear guest speakers discuss their favorite subject. But given that they were discussing how people interact, Mamidipaka thought members should reach out beyond their immediate circle.
“The first year was virtual, and meetings weren’t that engaging,” said Mamidipaka, 17. “We watched movies and analyzed psychological content, and there were engaging conversations around that. But for me, it soon became more about the projects and events.”
The students created tutoring videos that they posted online and made available to other schools. They also organized a fundraiser for MS. Last year, they stepped up their outreach efforts.
“When we were in person, we had more opportunities to get engaged,” said Mamidipaka. “We also grew from about 30 members the first year to about 80, so we could ramp up the marketing for our meetings and events.”
In the fall, the “Heroes for Alzheimer’s” event collected more than $500 in pledges from students who ran laps around the school track.
“Although the event had a lot of planning and organization up-front with coordinating all the pledge forms, collecting the money beforehand and renting the stadium, it was a really fun event that involved the community, friends and family, and made us all come together for a good cause,” said Shruthi Balachander, the club’s event manager who will step into Mamidipaka’s role as president this fall.
In the spring, a bubble tea fundraiser was so successful it was expanded from three to seven days. About 500 drinks were sold, bringing in more than $1,300 for Partners in Health, a global organization that provides health care in some of the world’s poorest areas. For Mamidipaka, the effort was just the beginning.
“If we consistently continued this fundraiser over an entire school year, we could raise over $10,000 per year,” he said. “That’s thousands of lives that are being changed and improved—all due to the actions of a single club from a single school in a single county.”
Mamidipaka will attend Georgia Tech at the end of August, but he plans to keep in close contact with the club he started, and he plans to continue his outreach efforts in college while studying business, psychology and computer science. “I’m very interested in technology being used to solve social issues.”
Information about Northview High is online at fultonschools.org/northviewhs.
SEND US YOUR STORIES. Each week we look at programs, projects and successful endeavors at area schools, from pre-K to grad school. To suggest a story, contact H.M. Cauley at hm_cauley@yahoo.com or 770-744-3042.
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