Veda Kommineni, Public Servant and Scholarship Winner

Hometown Heroism

For a freshman in college, Veda Kommineni has some impressive achievements to her name: a completed volunteer term with a political action committee, the role of Student President for her class at Johns Hopkins University, and her very own nonprofit, for starters. That’s far from all, though; she has the time to achieve even more thanks to a full-ride scholarship she earned with the help of Scholarships.com.

Kommineni’s involvement in public service began in her hometown of Edwardsville, Illinois, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept the country in 2020. When new health regulations cut her middle school’s schedule down to half-days and closed the cafeterias, Kommineni learned that many of her peers were unable to access food for lunch.

“Scholarships.com saved me in a lot of ways... Senior year is difficult enough with applying to college, and then having to figure out how to fund that college experience is all the more taxing, so having a centralized platform really made all the difference.”

“For me, it was fine. I could just go home and eat whatever I wanted. But for a lot of people— I think around 14% of our district at that time— it meant that they weren’t getting one of their meals that day,” she explained. “They weren’t just going to their pantry and figuring out what else to eat; they just didn’t have that food.”

So Kommineni began sneaking granola bars from her pantry to school every morning. She kept it up for a few weeks, distributing the snacks to students in need; then, one day, she was called down to her principal’s office. She was sure she was in trouble, that the whole operation would be shut down then and there.

“But they’d actually decided that they wanted to make this a program within our school,” said Kommineni. She worked with her school administration to establish The Care Closet, an on-campus food pantry and nonprofit, and set up a community wishlist to stock it. The whole list— $1,000 worth of shelf-stable food— was bought out in a week.

“Now these kids knew that even though they weren’t getting their full meals from the school, they had another resource,” Kommineni said. “They could get pasta and pasta sauce and go home to cook it, or they could just get a quick snack.”

Creating The Care Closet solidified Kommineni’s interest in hands-on community service; “I’m someone who doesn’t like being told that I can’t change the outcome of things,” she said. “This was something I could do.”

Kommineni jumped into more and more public service opportunities as she continued through her primary education. She organized donation drives for I Support the Girls, a nationwide nonprofit dedicated to promoting menstrual equity, and established a partnership between it and The Care Closet. Then, when Dr. Alicia Alexander, affiliate director of I Support the Girls’s Edwardsville chapter, noticed Kommineni’s dedication and enthusiasm for social change, she recommended the young volunteer to join She Votes Illinois, a local political action committee.

“That probably changed my life, because I didn’t know how much impact someone like me could make on legislation or on policy,” Kommineni said. “I got to work with legislators in Illinois, primarily Representative Barbara Hernandez, who taught me how to write policy, explained why policy doesn’t always get implemented, what the right time to pass a legislative bill is…”

Legislative work, Kommineni realized as she advanced into high school, was the perfect blend of social action, hands-on changemaking, and community service she’d always wanted to do. “Getting to sign one piece of paper that changes hundreds, if not thousands, of lives is something that I absolutely want to do for the rest of my life,” she said. So she started looking into colleges that would allow her to chase that dream.

Immediately, though, Kommineni came face to face with a new challenge: the rising price of college. Even with the privilege of relative financial security on her side, there was no way she and her family could afford college out of pocket. “Forget going to law school; that may be out of the question,” Kommineni remembered thinking. “Even going to undergrad costs, like, more than my house.”

Kommineni saw two possible futures in store for her if she were to pursue an education in legislative action without attaining any further financial aid. Either she would be burdened with significant student debt for many years, or her family would shoulder the weight for her.

“Neither of those outcomes were ones I wanted,” she said, “so out of simple necessity, I had to start looking for scholarships.” She began her search with Scholarships.com.

“Scholarships.com saved me in a lot of ways,” said Kommineni. “Senior year is difficult enough with applying to college, and then having to figure out how to fund that college experience is all the more taxing, so having a centralized platform really made all the difference.”

“I really get to look for something that I want to do,” said Kommineni. “It is such a privilege— and it probably wouldn’t happen without a scholarship.”

On Scholarships.com, Kommineni didn’t need to sift through broad categories of awards to find her perfect fit. Her dashboard was tailored to her needs, from her interest in community service to her residence in Edwardsville to her financial status: “If you have a really niche interest, like horse riding, I guarantee you, on Scholarships.com, you can find a scholarship for horse riders,” she said. No matter how specific your passion, Scholarships.com can find an award for it.

Kommineni even received biweekly emails with the latest updates on her scholarship matches. “I can think of a number of times where I got emails from Scholarships.com with the newsletter, and it reminded me that I needed to be applying for scholarships,” she recalled. “It also gave me a quick summary of scholarships that I could apply to in one click and scholarships that were due soon. Just having that reminder was helpful, because there’s already so much else to keep track of.”

With the help of Scholarships.com and her school’s guidance office, Kommineni won a variety of scholarships, including big-name awards like the Coca-Cola Scholars Program Scholarship and smaller, specialized funds like the PEO Star Scholarship. But her biggest win was, fittingly, quite local.

During Kommineni’s senior year of high school, her hometown of Edwardsville’s Community Foundation received an all-new scholarship endowment. The Robert E. Remmert Endowed Scholarship would fund one local student’s entire undergraduate career. The timing was perfect, but Kommineni didn’t expect to win.

“[For the Edwardsville Community Foundation’s endowments,] you apply for a scholarship generally, and then they pick what they think you could be a finalist for,” she explained. “They had me as a finalist for 2 different scholarships. One was the full ride, and one was a $1,000 scholarship. I was really excited about the possibility of either.”

A series of interviews later, Kommineni got the news: she’d won the full-tuition scholarship. And she had big plans for how to make the most of it.

Kommineni is now a freshman at Johns Hopkins University, where she is bridging her passion for menstrual equity and politics with a double major in public health and international studies. Just one semester into her time there, she’s already making an impact on campus and beyond— her activities number in the dozens, including Student Government, Model UN, and even continuing her work with I Support the Girls’s Baltimore chapter. Plus, she’s picked up a seasonal job she loves for her breaks from school: serving ice cream in her hometown.

“I get to work for my local ice cream shop for fun. I’m doing it for some pocket money, basically; I’m not doing it to sustain my entire life,” Kommineni said. “I get to scoop ice cream instead of having to sit at a desk while I’m still 18 years old and try to earn the big bucks.”

Overall, Kommineni sees her scholarship wins as absolutely critical to her ability to thrive in college. Without the money she’s earned, she said, “I couldn’t commit 8 hours [per week] to bettering my student body. That’s something that’s important to me, and I wouldn’t get to do it otherwise.”

In terms of her future prospects, Kommineni is thankful not to need to search for a paid summer internship like many of her peers; in the world of law, where student internships are both essential and often unpaid, her opportunities would be greatly limited without the financial security she’s achieved.

“I really get to look for something that I want to do,” said Kommineni. “It is such a privilege— and it probably wouldn’t happen without a scholarship.”

“There’s no perfect formula to getting a scholarship or to getting into college,” Kommineni advised. But with Scholarships.com, she said, “As long as you can find one thing that you really like to do or find an activity that you really love, you are going to find a scholarship that rewards you for it.”

And even though pouring your passions into scholarship application after scholarship application can be tiring, it’s worth it, Kommineni emphasizes.

“The feeling you get whenever you realize you’ve won something? That’s unmatched,” she concluded. “People saw your interests and your passions and think that you’re gonna become something, and they want to give you money for it. That feeling cannot be replaced by anything else.”

Sign up for a free account on Scholarships.com to receive your own scholarship matches today; learn more about The Care Closet at www.vedascarecloset.org.