Start Lighthouse was founded by NYU alumni Rina Madhani (GLS '14), Tejas Vemparala (STERN '14) and Brittany Kramer (CAS '14) during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in response to widespread school and library closures. Start Lighthouse creates access through customized literacy kits, literacy programming with a racial justice lens, and monthly community workshops for family members and caregivers in the South Bronx.Since launching, they have collected 5,186 brand-new books for our customized literacy kits, formed a partnership with Congresswoman Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez to scale their programming, and held a virtual decolonizing education hackathon that brought together 120 individuals nationally. Rina sat down with us to talk about her experiences at NYU and what motivated her to co-found Start Lighthouse.
