Through the AFS Global STEM AcceleratorsAFS Global STEM Accelerators scholarship program, Khushi Upadhyay realized she had the power to create change in her community.
Khushi’s experiences in designing a rainwater filtration system, building a circular-economy initiative, advocating alongside young people through UNICEF, and pursuing research in astrophysics are all connected by her belief that problems are opportunities to learn, collaborate and create change.
Ever since she was a child, Khushi understood the challenges that unreliable access to water created for families in her hometown of Kigali, Rwanda. For many households, daily life meant adapting to an inconsistent supply of clean water. These circumstances had always been part of daily life, and through the community and support of AFS, Khushi realized she had gained the tools and determination to be a part of the solution.
For the first time, Khushi was encouraged to see the challenges around her not as fixed conditions, but as problems that could be studied, understood and solved. This new perspective inspired her to design G.R.O.W. (Gravity-powered Rainwater Optimization Water-filtration), a modular system that collects and filters rainwater using simple materials and physics, making it accessible to households without electricity.
G.R.O.W. became Khushi’s social impact capstone project, an important part of the requirements for obtaining the Advanced Certificate on Global Competence for Social Impact, awarded by AFS and the University of Pennsylvania Center for Social Impact Strategy.
Although Khushi spent weeks designing and building the prototype for this device, the most important part of the project happened when she saw it become part of someone else’s life. “I remember standing in a home during the pilot, watching someone adjust the system, ask questions, and begin to trust it,” Khushi recalled. “At that moment, it stopped being ‘my project’ and became something real.”
Seeing someone interact with a solution she had built changed the way Khushi understood social innovation. She realized a successful solution was not simply one that worked but also responded to people’s needs and could fit naturally into their lives.
“[Global STEM] Accelerators didn’t just teach me how to design a solution,” she reflected. “It also taught me to listen, to observe, and to build with people, not just for them.” This lesson has continued to shape Khushi’s journey as a changemaker.
But G.R.O.W. was not Khushi’s first contact with changemaking in her community. Even before applying to AFS, she co-founded Gift Cycle, a community initiative focused on collecting and redistributing gently used items while raising awareness about sustainability and circular economy. Khushi would collaborate with friends and family to visit nearby schools to raise awareness and collect donations, as well as with local NGOs, such as the Kwizera Charity Foundation and Root Foundation, both operating in Kigali. Through Gift Cycle, Khushi went on to grow a community of her own, with over 500 committed changemakers.
As her project expanded, Khushi began to see Gift Cycle as more than a way to redistribute resources. It became an opportunity to take responsibility for the kind of change she wanted to see in her community, a mindset that began taking shape during her time with AFS.
After completing AFS Global STEM Accelerators, Khushi expanded Gift Cycle and now partners with Club Rafiki Youth Empowering Center and Hameau des Jeunes Saint Kizito NGOs, reaching rural communities outside of Kigali city. Khushi estimates they have now impacted over 1,100 children and adults through this project, marking an important milestone in her journey as a changemaker.
”Accelerators helped me think more deeply about the bigger picture behind what we were doing,” she reflects, “the combination of self-paced learning, structured reflection, and applying ideas to real-world challenges encouraged me to think more ambitiously about what I could do with an initiative I’d already started”.
Her commitment to community action led her to join the UNICEF Rwanda Youth Advocate Network. Through this network, Khushi actively participates in conferences, discussions and collaborative sessions focused on issues affecting youth in her community, all while being surrounded by other young leaders advocating for social issues affecting their communities in her home country.
“Sitting in bustling rooms with other young people—contributing to discussions and speaking on issues that affect our communities—I realized how much my voice, and our collective voice, could matter,” she reflected.
Khushi credits her time in the AFS Global STEM Accelerators program with helping her find that voice. She reflects on her time in the weekly virtual live sessions, which engaged her and her peers in “global discussions where we were encouraged to ask questions and demand answers, helping me forge part of myself.”
Those conversations helped Khushi develop her active global citizenship skills, including critical thinking, collaboration and leadership, which she also found useful while conducting research in astrophysics. In this field, she encountered increasingly complex concepts, including variance analysis and folded light curves. At times, these challenges felt overwhelming, but instead of seeing uncertainty as a reason to stop, Khushi drew on the determination she discovered during her time with AFS.
Her research later went on to be published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Emerging Investigators, under the title Deep Learning for Pulsar Detection: Investigating Hyperparameter; Effects on TensorFlow Classification Accuracy. In her research paper, she collaborated with co-author Josephine Wong from the Department of Physics at Stanford University.
“Accelerators ingrained this grit in me; a determination that permeates everything I do, and drives me to run a little faster, jump a little higher, and venture out of my comfort zone into new territories.”
Looking back, Khushi sees her AFS experience as much more than the source of a single project or new set of skills. It fundamentally changed how she understood her role in the world.
“Impact is not a single project or moment, but a mindset, and one that grows every day: through action, through collaboration, and through unwavering curiosity and determination to make a positive change.”
As she looks into the future, Khushi hopes to continue developing sustainable and accessible solutions. As an alumni mentor for the 2026 cohort of the Accelerators program, she encouraged the new generation of AFS Global STEM scholars to look at themselves not simply as learners, but as future changemakers.
Even though Khushi was born in India, she has lived almost her entire life in Rwanda, making it her home and an essential part of her cultural identity. Most recently, Khushi was selected as the first person from Rwanda to attend Camp Rising Sun, an international, full-scholarship leadership program founded in 1929 and hosted in New York. In an interview with a TV network in Rwanda, Khushi explained: “I was […] privileged to represent the Rwandan culture. I took the concept of ‘muganda’, which shows the resilience and community spirit of Rwandans [and applied it to] social policy and ethical leadership.”
Khushi’s journey is a powerful example of how, when young people are given the opportunity to look differently at the challenges around them, they can discover not only new solutions, but also their own capacity to drive meaningful change.
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