Maunika Atmakuri, a junior at High School North, has earned the Girl Scouts Gold Award, the highest award for Girl Scouts. She has been a Girl Scout for the last seven years. A student in WW-P since second grade, she attended Town Center and Millstone River schools.
Her Project, El Centro’s Computer Lab, involved renovating a computer lab and holding a computer basics workshop for its summer program run by Maria Duarte. Atmakuri’s troop leader, Louisa Ho, introduced her to the organization El Centro, as well as Duarte, who became her mentor.
“Maria was extremely helpful in answering all my questions and always made time for me.” says Atmakuri. “I’m so grateful to the kids who were so nice and energetic when I taught them.”
“I have always loved computers and anything to do with them,” says Atmakuri. “Computers are an integral part of my life and I can’t imagine my life without them. Whether it is for school work, reading, or relaxing, computers have so many uses and I’m grateful to have access to them. It concerned me that others did not have the same resources I had. I just had to change that.”
Atmakuri started collecting donations for the computer lab in June. “The neighbors were very generous,” says her mother, Padmaja Atmakuri. “We received numerous E-mails and calls with donations. Even people we had never met before would call us and tell us that they had computer equipment for us. We received donations at least once a week.” Atmakuri’s efforts yielded plenty of computer equipment such as chairs, keyboards, and LCD monitors.
After collecting all the equipment, Atmakuri began to implement them into the existing computer lab. “Even though there was a lot of equipment to be installed, and it took a lot of time to make sure the new equipment was compatible with the existing equipment, I was very proud of the end result,” says Atmakuri.
“The computer lab looked great. All the missing and non functional equipment at the computer lab had been fixed, and now the entire lab is fully functional,” says Atmakuri. “I was so happy to see that everything there could now be used.”
Atmakuri also did a workshop with the kids where she taught them how to use Microsoft Office programs such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Paint. In addition, she also taught them Internet safety and how to effectively navigate the Internet.
Atmakuri is a part of High School North’s Science Olympiad and junior varsity track teams. Her sister, Varnika Atmakuri, graduated from North in 2011, and is a student at Cornell University. Her father is Dharmendra Atmakuri.
