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Aaron Friedland
When he was a Grade 11 high school student in Vancouver, Canada, Aaron was made aware of what life was like for students in rural Uganda. He subsequently was able to visit, and saw firsthand the difficulties children were experiencing in attending school. He thought that he could do something to help, so he created a program called the Walking School Bus. It aims to provide low cost school buses, provide support infrastructure like water catchment systems, and to furnish numerous communities with solar-powered classrooms. However, one of the most remarkable parts of the Walking School Bus is its program for teaching reading. Aaron’s genius insight was to record students in Vancouver reading their classroom books aloud to make an audio book, which was then made available to students in Uganda, who could listen to the audio while following the printed text. In this way they learned correct pronunciation and help with the words. For this and other contributions to education in developing countries, Aaron in 2016 was awarded the “Next Einstein” award offered by CNN in New York. The strength of Aaron’s vision is that it is transferable to other countries and he has already begun a program in India. All of this has been achieved at a very young age. Aaron is now pursuing a PhD program in Economic Development at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
