A teen from Surrey has earned the distinction of being one of Canada’s Top 20 youth.
Ivneet Bains, the 19-year-old boy, was given Top 20, Under 20 award by a national not-for-profit organization Youth in Motion. The organization celebrates and honors Canadians who have demonstrated a significant level of innovation, leadership and achievement but have not yet reached the age of 20.
Ivneet, who is not completely a Canadian resident yet and is on PR, has founded Math4me, a mentoring organization which helps young Canadians achieve academic and personal excellence.
“It is for the first time a person holding a PR has been selected for this award,” said the proud Ivneet, who came to Canada only in 2007, with his family from Mohali.
“Ivneet has been a brilliant all rounder since childhood. He is a cricketer, musician and a theatre artist. When I realized his talent needed more exposure, I decided to move to Vancouver,” said Haropinder Bains, Ivneet’s father.
He proved his genius in Canada too. After entering Panorama Ridge High School in Surrey, he gained confidence volunteering with Surrey’s parks department, joining the school’s drama program and becoming a star batsman in the B.C. Mainland Cricket League.
In grade 12, he earned 100 per cent in math, calculus, physics, biology and chemistry, and in 2009 received the Governor General’s Academic Medal for Excellence.
Currently a second year business student at the University of British Columbia, he was offered full scholarship from the university.
“It was during my first year, I realized the need to help youth in their academics. I founded Math4me initiative,” he said.
Math4Me helps Grade 3 to 12 students improve their math, science and English skills, and links them with volunteer work to better themselves and the world.
“We discovered teens today are too distracted. They are either on social networking sites or playing XBox. They do not have any goal in their lives. It was important to solve these problems first before giving them tuitions. We developed personal mentorship in which a student is motivated to study through different approaches like meditation, Yoga etc. They are then asked to sit down and discuss their long term goal and what they want to achieve in life,” Ivneet said.
“Our main goal is to provide affordable and effective tutoring to every student in our community. Hence, we start as low as $8 / hour for students in grade 8,” he said.
Where does Ivneet get inspiration to juggle between so many jobs? “They are my passions not jobs so I enjoy doing different things,” he said.