Education Access
Three student programs that began as one 8th-grade project
Ainesh Kumar started a peer-tutoring club and a soccer club in 8th grade and grew them into United Minds, three student-led programs at Largo Middle IB World School that he says have reached 65+ tutored students, 96+ soccer players and 2,000+ study-website visitors.
When schools went back to fully in person, Ainesh Kumar was in the 8th grade. Many of his peers had difficulty adjusting back to in-person learning. Academic performance suffered, he says, as students "were distracted by phones and felt lost after missing months of in-class learning." The options on offer, "which were neither effective nor personalized to students' needs," were to take the phones away or to attend after-school teacher-led programs.
The clubs came first. In the 2021-2022 academic year, for his Service Learning Project and to help his peers, he started an after-school peer-tutoring club called "AYA Study World," where students could learn from their peers in a relaxed environment. He also started a soccer club, LMS Tiger FC. He kept overseeing both after he moved on to Largo High School's IB program.
“The goal with United Minds and my academic pursuits is to help empower individuals around me to set clear goals and we all continue sharpening every step together.”
Ainesh Kumar
"A consistent observation I made as I interacted with my classmates was that students needed opportunities to become aware of their own strengths and potential," he says. In his sophomore year in 2023 he parked both clubs and launched a website under the umbrella name "United Minds," to help students at his old school find what he calls "a united way to excellence through learning, fitness, and creativity."
Three programs now sit under that name. AR Study World, the tutoring club renamed with AR standing for "Academia Redefined," connects students with Largo Middle School alumni and adds hands-on learning on virtual reality headsets. He puts the count at 65+ students. LMS Tiger FC is, he says, Pinellas County's first middle school intramural soccer club, with more than 96 players and more than $2,000 raised for jerseys and equipment. AR Study Zone, added in January 2024, is a study website where students build personalized study spaces, use mind maps and infographic notes, and browse a video library. More than 2,000 students have visited it.
He was a Florida MyImpact Challenge Winner, the 2025 Pinellas County Schools Youth Volunteer of the Year for Area 2, and a finalist at the 2026 National Invention Convention for AR Study Zone.
He is now at the University of South Florida. He is mentoring a team of high schoolers to oversee the programs, and plans to use what he learned starting United Minds in his future entrepreneurial pursuits. His plan, he says, is to be the "guide on the side" to his successors.