Fairfax HS student Kiran Ashok has been awarded a 2025 Student Peace Award of Fairfax County, designed to recognize young people who work as peacemakers.
The Student Peace Awards of Fairfax County began in 2006 as a way to encourage people to think more about peace as both a means and an end, and to recognize young people who work as peacemakers. Every year, the high schools in Fairfax County are asked to select one junior or senior, or a group of students, whose work has promoted peace. The project is organized by volunteers and funded by donations from 15 secular and religious sponsoring organizations.
Kiran Ashok learned the basics of engineering, programming, problem-solving, and teamwork as a competitor in events organized by FIRST Robotics. Kiran taught online coding classes and began to think about robotics as more of an opportunity to reach out and teach new students rather than just to compete for herself.
She co-founded FIRST For Youth in 2021, a non-profit that deploys high school volunteers weekly to some of Fairfax County’s low-income Title 1 schools to introduce FIRST robotics programs. So far, 58 volunteers have tallied 625 volunteer hours, started 15 tech teams, and raised a total of $22,445, with a combined impact on 23,50 students and families across northern Virginia.