Changemaking through education is the backbone of EI Amplified, an international EdTech organization that utilizes social-emotional learning to empower future innovators.
When EI Amplified founder, Aman Sahota, began working in the sustainability field, he realized that while technology was a great tool, education and empathy were the two components that could truly create change. Sahota later met Professor Hajimir, Iran’s Olympic coach in mathematics, whose goal was to change modern education by integrating experiential learning and emotional intelligence into the classroom.
“The real way you can make change is through education in those younger years,” Sahota says. “Those foundations build us into who we become in the future.”
And so, the team built EI Amplified upon four pillars: emotional intelligence; mentorship; learning how to learn; and diversity, equity, and inclusivity.
“A lot of people focus on technology growing, but we want to show that the human behind the technology is of utmost importance,” says Sahota. “These four pillars will make you a stronger individual that can utilize tech, but the tech shouldn’t be the focus. We should focus on developing humans.”
EI Amplified focuses on creating emotionally intelligent leaders through empathy-based experiential learning. The team does this in two ways: through research and consulting, as well as student workshops.
“Our researching is really to act as a reflective mirror for schools and see where they stand. We use these findings to come up with action items to improve school environments,” Sahota says. “We’re a very data-driven, change-oriented organization.”
Three student workshops are offered at EI Amplified: the environmental change program, the music program, and the mathematics program. They aim to bring industry and education together through the expertise of their team, whose backgrounds stem from sustainability, mathematics, and the music industry.
The workshops bring real-world applications to school through STEM and arts-based social-emotional learning. The team’s goal is to teach self-awareness, self-management, and how to create strong relationships. They believe that early education is the key towards a sustainable future rooted in diversity, equity, and inclusion.
EI Amplified has also mentored refugees from Kakuma Refugee Camp, an orphanage in Uganda and a non-profit in Nepal. Through these partnerships, they hope to encourage sustainable development and social-emotional learning internationally. In the future, the team aims to become a third-party resource for many schools.
“We don’t realize it at a young age, but everything we do and learn in school sets us up for our future. This is why we want students to get involved, to make change within their everyday lives and in their communities,” Sahota says, “We want students to build themselves as individuals so they can start impacting future generations.”
For more information, visit: https://eiamplified.com
