Coding is like art, says Arihant Jaggi, a Miami Beach teen. Starting with only an idea, he says, “you can program it to anything you want. If I found something to be inconvenient or annoying, I can just program a tool to solve it.”
It is that problem-solving mindset that led Arihant to build an impactful youth-led tech education organization. Now the 16-year-old senior at Cushman High School is the co-founder and president of the nonprofit Young Coders Initiative (YCI) – and this homegrown educational movement that has even gone global.
What sparked such an endeavor? In late 2022, when Florida faced a severe public school teacher shortage, some high school computer science classes across the Miami area were left without enough qualified instructors. That’s when Arihant, then in the eighth grade, saw a large problem to solve. He gathered a small group of peers – starting with his older brother and YCI co-founder, Aryaman, who was experiencing this teacher crunch at Beach High. They began hosting grassroots coding sessions out of the North Shore Library to supplement what schools were providing.
Then, to expand the coding sessions particularly across underserved South Florida neighborhoods, Arihant designed a decentralized branch model. Under this strategy, high schoolers could establish local YCI chapters to host workshops and manage community-specific programming.
YCI developed its own structured curriculum, beginning with Python but also including Java, HTML, JavaScript and C++. It also built a custom educational technology platform with coding simulators, giving students a way to practice programming in a more interactive environment.
What’s more, YCI forged strategic partnerships with prominent regional nonprofits, including Breakthrough Miami, Achieve Miami, and Overtown Youth Center. “They gave us the opportunity to teach during their Super Saturdays,” Arihant explains. “Our team comes in for an hour-and-a-half block, bringing coding workshops directly into their structured programming.”Those partnerships also solved an early credibility problem: convincing people that student instructors could deliver meaningful computer science education.
Scaling up
Since launching in May 2023, Arihant’s leadership has driven remarkable metrics across the South Florida ecosystem and beyond. To date, YCI’s 100-plus high school volunteers have logged over 4,000 volunteer hours through 18 active chapters, including at top regional schools including Cushman, Ransom Everglades, Miami Country Day, St. Thomas Aquinas, and School for Advanced Studies, Arihant says.
YCI has reached over 10,000 students in all. This includes YCI’s Global Ambassadors Program now in in India, where Arihant has family ties, and the UAE, providing direct long-term instruction to more than 1,000 scholars. He’s visited the programs too andwas struck by the competence of the local leaders and by seeing students abroad learning through the same curriculum as their counterparts in Miami. “That was really big for me,” Arihant says.
For Arihant, closing the digital divide requires hardware alongside education. After winning $5,000 worth of laptops through the Samsung Solve competition, YCI began awarding computers to top scholars who lacked access to tech at home. To keep the pipeline funded, Arihant actively pitches local startups and corporate partners.
So far, YCI has distributed over $9,500 in laptops, scholarships, and hackathon prize money directly to under-resourced students. “The best donation we can make is giving a laptop to these students,” Arihant says. “You need a laptop to code.”
Upcoming hackathon
Arihant, a National Merit Semifinalist, shows no signs of slowing down. YCI’s next major milestone is its flagship hackathon hosted in Cushman High School’s main auditorium Oct. 25.
“We are expecting up to 10-12 teams of 3-5 members from schools across South Florida. The theme is agentic AI for hyperlocal community change within Miami. We have gotten $2,000 in funding from Founders Future, an AI VC firm, and are also partnering with Big Red Education and Detect AI for them to come support and maybe even speak at the event,” Arihant says.
Partnering with edtech organizations and engaging local ecosystem leaders like Danny Lafuente, partner at The LAB Miami, Arihant wants to shift the focus of traditional tech competitions.
“Money is pretty cool, but an internship is much harder to get,” Arihant notes. Instead of only cash prizes, he says he is pitching local startups and companies to offer internships and shadowing opportunities as prizes so high schoolers can experience how real tech companies operate.
What’s next? More expansion for YCI and strengthening opportunities for students to collaborate across branches, Arihant says. And on a personal level, his sights are set on studying computer science at a top institution like Stanford after graduation.
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