Pint-sized podcaster wins national award: SJ 4th-grader tells story of family’s forced exile

EVERY YEAR, THOUSANDS of students showcase their creativity and storytelling skills by competing in NPR’s Annual Student Podcast Challenge. Among them, 10-year-old Ameya Desai of San Jose stood out. Her podcast, Far From Home: A Story of Forced Migration, captured the hearts of listeners, winning first place in the fourth-grade category in August of 2024. Her piece tells the powerful story of her grandfather’s forced expulsion from Uganda in the 1970s under dictator Idi Amin — a history deeply personal yet still quite relevant.

The inspiration behind the podcast

Ameya’s journey with storytelling started long before she sat down to record Far From Home. In 2023, she won first place in the San Jose Writing Contest for her piece Sugarcane Fields on My Mind, which explored her grandfather’s experience of exile. That story was just the beginning. When a discussion about war in the Middle East erupted among her classmates, it triggered a deeper reflection in Ameya about migration, conflict, and displacement. She realized that many of her peers had family members who had been forced to leave their homes because of war, persecution, or political turmoil. That’s when she decided to interview her grandfather for her NPR-winning podcast. Through the process of recording her podcast, she continued to talk to him and learn even more about his story of displacement.