In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, all schools in California and many other states have closed their facilities. Due to the shelter in place order, many students will not learn the full curriculum or have lost access to extra help with their schoolwork. Sophomores Rishab Gupta and Ethan Buriel, and freshman Ayush Gupta teamed up to try and address this issue by creating YouTutor, a website where students can be tutored for free by other students.

Rishab Gupta initially had the idea while brainstorming projects to start during quarantine. After solidifying the idea, he asked Buriel and Ayush Gupta to join him.

Ayush Gupta joined Rishab Gupta because of his passion for helping others. He wanted to do what he could to help students who may not be getting all of the support they need.

“Seeing the situation that the coronavirus has put us in turned me to YouTutor,” Ayush Gupta said. “The lack of academic facilities now is detrimental to students’ learning capabilities, and I wanted to address this problem.”

According to Buriel, their main goal is to provide free tutoring services that will cover material that online schools may not cover.

“Due to distance learning, periods became shorter. Less class time means that a lot of material will have to be taught at a much faster pace,” Buriel said. “We provide our services for free and will assist students until they develop a complete understanding of each subject.”

According to Rishab Gupta, this was his first time creating a website from scratch, so the process was slow at first. However, he was able to use templates and take inspiration from other organizations.

Rishab Gupta initially expected all of their students to be in the U.S., but they began gaining students from other countries.

“Recently, students from Dubai, Canada and India have joined as students, and we are committed to helping them even though they are on the other side of the world,” Rishab Gupta said.

Currently, the YouTutor community consists of 41 tutors and 30 students. Buriel said there are many factors to consider when scheduling lessons, including the amount of time a tutor can commit, the length of time a student wants to be tutored and the high demand for certain subjects.

“It’s a long and rigorous process, but we are glad that we were able to start our sessions,” Buriel said.

According to Rishab Gupta, students are receiving either individual tutoring or group learning for the subjects in higher demand like math, science, English and art.

“We have seen that our students like to use our services not only to get ahead in subjects but also to have some fun and express their creative side,” Rishab Gupta said.

He and the YouTutor team hope to recruit more students and tutors and continue to grow their community to places around the world.

“With the work ethic that we all have on the founding team, I am confident that we can expand this project to new heights,” Rishab Gupta said. “We also plan to register YouTutor as a nonprofit and start giving our tutors community service hours.”