When I was in 5th grade, my brother and I had the opportunity to visit and help at an after-school program in downtown Dallas. The focus of the program was mainly catered towards students that lived amidst turbulent circumstances. As I spent more time with them that day I became increasingly aware of how different my life was in comparison to theirs. Growing up, I was surrounded by 2 loving parents who fulfilled every need I had. For many of the kids I read to that day, they did not have the opportunity to experience the same love, as most of them had either one or both parents in jail or worse, their parents had passed away. In fact, at such a young age they seemed well aware of the cards life had dealt them. It was within this context that my brother and I began searching for a way to help kids in similar situations have the opportunity to achieve their dreams and explore their passions.

We began our research and found out that public schools in dense urban areas with limited government funding do not have the resources to properly educate children to the same level as schools established in affluent areas. With class sizes growing every year across America, and government education spending inconsistent, there needed to be a way to equalize the education system in our country. This would give more kids the opportunity to explore their passions regardless of their socioeconomic background. Education is, and will continue to be, the engine powering our growing society. Thus, any solution for improving the livelihoods of kids living in less fortunate circumstances begins with making education more accessible.

The solution we came up with was LinxBank – an open-source application that aims to reduce this education discrepancy throughout the US. LinxBank is a search engine that simplifies & distills results to the most pertinent for a user-specified topic. The website sorts each result into three categories: books, lessons, and tests from which the user can filter out results quickly as the resource database is made up of only peer-reviewed resources. These resources can be contributed to the platform by anyone in the form of links, and each resource undergoes a heavy screening process by former and current high school students. By creating an all-encompassing, verified, and detailed search engine we’ve greatly increased the efficiency at which students can find online learning materials. In contributing to LinxBank, you will enable students from less privileged circumstances to have a verified and effective education platform, so that one day they too can chase their dreams.