A Nashua teen has been recognized for his work to improve digital literacy among seniors.
17-year-old Aadi Kulkarni started teaching digital skills to seniors in his community around five years ago. He and his friends would go to local libraries and senior homes to help with things like sending emails or using a smartphone.
Aadi then founded the nonprofit TechPals in 2022 to continue that work and it’s since grown to over 500 volunteers across seven states.
Now he’s won the 2025 Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes, which annually honors 25 young people around the country for making a positive difference in their communities.
Kulkarni spoke with NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa about his work.
Transcript
So who or what inspired you to start teaching digital skills to seniors?
This was all originally inspired by my own grandparents, who are immigrants from India. One thing I really noticed with them is that they really struggled in simple tasks like sending messages to their friends. They would always ask me for help, like sending FaceTime messages or starting Zoom calls or anything like that. So that was my initial inspiration and who I started helping out first.
From there I started to expand and I talked a lot to my friends and they experienced similar issues to that. So that's when I really started to realize that this was a much larger problem. And then after talking to local elderly homes, where I had volunteered in the past, I realized that New Hampshire had a relatively [high] elderly population. I think it's around the second highest median age within the United States. That was kind of my initial inspiration for starting TechPals.
What was that like for you to see this effort really get momentum and start moving in other places?
I mean, it was pretty shocking. I wasn't really expecting anything like a large nonprofit. It was originally just intended as a small little club at Nashua High School South. And then really seeing it take off with our first chapter in Hollis Brookline High School and Westford, [Massachusetts]. We kind of created this network of different TechPals clubs across the country and that was really the beginning of our nonprofit TechPals. Now we're starting to actually have a chapter in India, Pakistan and Nigeria. So it's been really great hearing that and all the impact we've had so far.
So what kind of tech skills are you teaching at TechPals? What does a typical session look like?
We have two different types of sessions. One [is] our typical question-and-answer session, where we have a certain amount of volunteers, a certain amount of seniors, and we actually pair them in a buddy system. That's where we got our name: TechPals.
The other type we have is basically a teaching session where we have a singular topic — which could be fraud prevention or how to use telehealth services.
Tech Pals really tries to solve three main things. One is access to essential services because a lot of essential services like telehealth [and] online banking are now shifting digital. Another place where we really try to teach them is fraud detection and trying to really distinguish between scam emails and real emails, and just trying to keep them safe on the internet. The third area that we're really trying to solve is loneliness and isolation and being able to use technology independently.
What are some of the main reasons you hear from seniors about why they want to learn more about technology? What are they missing out on, maybe?
I think the biggest thing that I've heard is just not being independent enough and feeling really lonely and isolated from other people. Because now, communication, especially for elderly people who live in senior homes, they don't really have an immediate connection or face-to-face connection with family members. So a lot of moments, we've helped seniors FaceTime their grandchildren and stuff like that. I think isolation is one of the biggest things we see, and we really want to solve that so they can independently get in contact with people and their loved ones.
So you won $10,000 through this award. What are you going to do with it?
We're going to spend a lot of time and a lot of this money on raising awareness about the issue and talking to a lot of different legislators, not just in New Hampshire, but across the country and maybe even on the federal level, to get them to understand the issue.
A lot of people tend to look at digital literacy and digital equity from a part where people don't have technology, but a lot of people forget to look at the people who do have technology but don't actually know how to use it safely or effectively. So I think that's our first priority and initiative that we're going to spend our money on.
