Chattahoochee High School Student Wins Award

JOHNS CREEK, GA — Sri Vaishnavi Ghantasala is a Junior at Chattahoochee High School. Vaishnavi is an intrinsically motivated child with interests in computer science, mathematics, and her mother tongue, Telugu. Last month, she won second place for Tirakaatam in Telugu Maatlaata, an international level competition hosted by SiliconAndhra Manabadi, a non-profit organization serving the Telugu language, heritage, and people.

Telugu Maatlaata was held in three levels - regional, zonal and international. Vaishnavi won first place in both the regional (within Georgia) and the zonal (within Georgia, Texas and Tennessee) levels which helped her advance to the international (within USA and Canada) level. Telugu Maatlaata focuses on teaching second and third generation Telugu American kids about the Telugu language, culture, and history.

Tirakaatam is a buzzer-quiz style game which includes questions on topics like Indian history, government and culture, American history, government, and culture, Telugu literature, Telugu grammar etc. Participants are required to respond to all questions in complete sentences in Telugu. Vaishnavi has won second place in this competition for three years now: 2015, 2016, and 2018.

As the second place winner, she gets a trophy and a cash prize of $751. Some of Vaishnavi’s other accomplishments in 2018 include - a state level award in the International Math Kangaroo competition, and third place at the Fulton County Technology Fair 2017-2018 for Project Programming.