Aniyah Ayres

Aniyah’s Mission

Aniyah began her work as an 8-year-old when she organized a Children’s Die-In to protest police brutality and gun violence. Sixty of her peers and their families closed off one of Philadelphia’s busiest intersections, garnering local and national media attention. Inspired to do more, she formed Aniyah’s Mission to honor and further the work of her late father, a pastor passionate about helping the city’s underserved. Aniyah works closely with the Philadelphia 76ers on their youth advocacy and outreach programs. She has also created a Kids Care room at a local elementary school, where students can confidentially obtain food, toiletries, and school supplies. She is the author of The Life Without…, a recently published book to help young people experiencing the loss of a loved one. “I believe all children should have a voice and be heard, have clothing and a warm place to sleep, and be able to eat every day. It should be that simple,” says Aniyah. “Until that happens for every child, my work will not end.”

Annie Zhu

Fresh Hub & Readiness Across Mathematics

Her team first established a partnership with the Houston Health Department in order to distribute food at community centers in two food deserts. A partnership with Second Servings, a local nonprofit, helped Annie’s group connect with stores like Trader Joe’s willing to donate surplus food. Fresh Hub also connected with human service agencies that agreed to attend monthly markets to provide support beyond food. Annie’s work has helped her realize the relationship between food insecurity and educational inequity – and inspired her last year to launch Readiness Across Mathematics (RAM). An extension of Fresh Hub, RAM has already helped nearly 100 underserved students improve their math skills through monthly workshops, one-on-one tutoring, and online programs. “My frustration over the unfair circumstances built into society has led me to meet incredible people,” says Annie. “I know I’m not alone on this journey to help the underserved – and I know my journey has only just begun!”

Annie was featured on the Inspiring Young Heroes series Ask a Young Hero and IYH Big Ideas.

Bill Tong

Bioma Project

Inspired by these successes – as well as by Gandhi’s call to “be the change” – Bill committed to creating an interactive environmental education program. He pitched his idea of classroom aquariums to schools across Maryland and D.C. Dozens jumped at the chance to participate and offered input. Bill spent much of his sophomore year creating a 40-page curriculum and obtaining permits for collecting wild fish. To fund start-up costs of $1,600, he and his friends sold their Pokemon card collections. Bioma Project students demonstrate a 60% increase in environmental literacy over the course of Bill’s year-long program. Bill continues to fund his free program through a small fish farm he created in his basement. “I now understand Gandhi’s wise words. Change is hard, and I learned I needed to blaze a path for others,” says Bill. “Through persistence, the students of the Bioma Project have become the change I wanted to see in the world.”

Chander Payne

Urban Beet

Chander began his work in 2016 after noticing the lack of fresh produce at his school. To help, he connected the student food pantry with a local rooftop farm. That summer, he fell in love with regenerative agriculture and returned to school with a mission: to use the practice to help marginalized youth grow food. Chander created an urban farm in his school’s courtyard and invited young people from the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project to grow and harvest vegetables. His weekly workdays allow homeless children to experience the mental and emotional benefits of gardening, and to enjoy their harvest as farm fresh meals made by True Food Kitchen. Chander’s team recently began creating and donating Free Little Farms — window sill planters complete with soil, seeds, and a note of support. “My work has led me to see the world as a regenerative farmer — to be perceptive and empathetic,” says Chander. “I envision a world where I walk into underserved neighborhoods and see colorful beets and tomatoes growing – a world where every kid has a close relationship with living soil and fresh food.”

Chander was featured on the Inspiring Young Heroes series Ask a Young Hero and IYH Big Ideas.

Dana Perella

Cookies4Cures

To increase fundraising and share more widely her work to help Mila, Dana created a GoFundMe campaign. It went viral. Fueled by the response, Dana asked friends to help her bake and they started holding cookie pop-ups – events where they educated people about rare diseases and offered cookies in exchange for donations. Within months, Dana had raised $56,000 for Mila’s research fund, which led to the first-ever treatment for her form of Batten. Dana has proceeded to help other children with rare diseases by raising an additional $45,000 for research. Her vision is to create a Cookies4Cures fundraiser for every rare childhood disease. She wants to inspire thousands of kids to help make that happen. “I hope that I can inspire more people to do their part,” says Dana. “For anyone who wants to change the world, I have two pieces of advice: 1) Believe in yourself and 2) Just start.”

Isabella Paoletti-Tejeda

Read a Story, Change a Life

Isabella first learned of the dire need for literacy intervention while volunteering as an 8th grader at Higher Ground Youth and Family Services, a local agency that supports at-risk youth. She discovered that nearly 80% of the children there were reading two grade levels below state standards. She also learned that most of the children had never visited the public library – her childhood home away from home, where she has volunteered for seven years. Isabella decided to take what she’d loved growing up at her library – the storytelling, workshops, and theatrical events – and bring them to at-risk children. She asked experts in Library Science for help with curriculum and recruited high school volunteers with experience in theater, creative writing, and design. Together, they created a 105-page training manual that includes scripts, songs, an instructional DVD of story time materials, and puppets. Isabella earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for her work. The Yorba Linda Public Library uses her materials to train volunteers and recently committed to continuing her program for years to come. “The process of finding a cause I feel passionate about and doing something about it has been life changing,” says Isabella. “I’ve learned that age doesn’t define my ability to create change in the world.”

Isha Clarke

Youth Vs. Apocalypse

Isha’s passionate voice helped launch YVA several years ago, when she took up the fight against a proposed coal export terminal through her West Oakland neighborhood, a low-income area already disproportionately affected by pollution. During youth protests outside the terminal developer’s office, Isha confronted the developer with her calm, confident voice. That experience of speaking truth to power fueled her determination to bring those most impacted by environmental injustice into the movement against it. YVA continues to fight for “No Coal in the Bay” and for reform in California’s oil and gas industry to protect people and the environment. For Earth Day 2020, the group organized a three-day virtual climate strike (given shelter-in-place orders at the time). The strike highlighted the need for climate justice work to focus on dismantling the larger systems of oppression that treat people as disposable. “Just because we can’t vote doesn’t mean we don’t deserve a seat at the table, especially when the topic of discussion is our futures,” says Isha. “There is only one planet and it is the job of all of us to sustain it.”

Isha was featured on our sister site, Inspiring Young Heroes, in an IYH Big Ideas series on Environmental Ethics & Climate Change.

Kavi Dolasia

Reaching Out with Robotics

Kavi fell in love with STEM as a sixth grader, one of just four girls on her school’s robotics team of 30 students. A year later, she joined her older sister in investigating why nearly all students in her high school STEM classes had attended one of the area’s two middle schools (Mill Valley), and not the other (Bayside). The girls found that 89% of students at Bayside were socio-economically disadvantaged, compared to just 7.9% at Mill Valley. The two middle schools’ vastly different test scores reflected the disparity. Kavi and her sister decided to start a weekly STEM club at Bayside — and Reaching Out with Robotics was born. Six years later, their annual robotics competition at Bayside showcases the STEM gains students there have made. Bayside is currently part of the first California school desegregation order in half a century. “The impact of my program has taught me that grassroots action can be a catalyst for tangible, lasting change,” says Kavi. “Every Monday when I walk into Bayside to teach robotics and see the triumphant smiles of students troubleshooting code, it gives me hope.”

Kavi Gandhi

Yash Gandhi Foundation

His parents stepped back and 13-year-old Kavi took charge. He expanded the foundation’s mission to include advocating on behalf of the I-Cell community. He overhauled its website, creating an information and networking hub for newly diagnosed families. He began building a strong social media presence that includes photos, bios, and videos of children living with I-Cell. His social campaigns have engaged nearly 200,000 people in 43 countries. An avid cross country runner, Kavi organizes the i Run for i-Cell 5K fundraiser each October. Dozens of I-Cell families from across the country gather for the race and to connect with others facing the disease. Kavi donates all race proceeds to prominent I-Cell researchers. His foundation has prompted a renaissance in research into the disease. “I’ve met so many heroes through my work – people who are endlessly passionate about their causes,” says Kavi. “I’m so hopeful about the continued positive impact that heroes, young and old, can bring to this world.”

Lillian Petersen

Uses Satellite Imagery to Predict Crop Yields in Africa

Lillian’s inspiration began nine years ago when her family adopted three children. All had faced food insecurity in their former homes and one was severely malnourished. Lillian worked with her new siblings daily to help them overcome cognitive delays and physical challenges. Several years ago, she heard of multiple crop failures that had thrown Ethiopia into a state of emergency, and aid organizations were unprepared. She knew that similar situations cause three million children to die from malnutrition each year. She resolved to help and put her love of technology to the task. Lillian has worked tirelessly since then, collaborating with leading satellite experts and writing thousands of lines of code. She first validated her method in Illinois and then applied it to every country in Africa, with highly accurate results. She continues to monitor crop health over Africa and is extending her work to predict malnutrition prevalence based on economic, social, and agricultural factors. “My younger siblings opened my eyes to the hardships faced by the underprivileged all over the world,” says Lillian. “I believe everyone has the responsibility to help reduce suffering. My goal is to unlock advances in technology and make them work for the world.”

Lillian was featured on the Inspiring Young Heroes series Ask a Young Hero and IYH Big Ideas.

Madhvi Chittoor

Madhvi4EcoEthics

Madhvi’s statewide campaign builds on her success petitioning her Denver-area school district to replace Styrofoam lunch trays with sustainable ones. She worked for months to gather signatures and then brought her petition and idea to the district superintendent. He set up a task force and asked Madhvi to help lead it. She attended and spoke at all of the task force’s meetings for nearly a year. In September 2019, the Jeffco Public School district — with 86,000 students across 155 schools — made the switch to compostable paper lunch trays. The move will eliminate 7.6 million Styrofoam trays from the landfill each year. A nature and animal enthusiast, Madhvi first became aware of plastic pollution in first grade, when she learned of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. By age 7, she’d written and published a book called Is Plastic My Food? to educate her peers about the problem. “I’ve learned that making change takes time and requires patience,” says Madhvi. “But I know that through persistence and determination, I can create change on a large scale, even though I am young.”

Matine Khalighi

Helping the Homeless Colorado & EEqual

During the fall of 2019, Matine felt drawn to address what he’d come to see as a critical need – support for K-12 public school students experiencing homelessness, who total more than 24,000 in Colorado alone. He challenged his team to reimagine what Helping the Homeless Colorado could do to help and pitched the idea of taking the organization to a new, national level. Nine months later, Matine and his team launched EEqual, a for youth, by youth nonprofit committed to mitigating the economic impacts of poverty in education through targeted programming. Using knowledge gained from experience and research, the EEqual team is now investing in education as a way to break the poverty cycle. EEqual supports students in need by providing classroom supplies, scholarships, and social awareness campaigns. “In my earlier life, I thought I was far too young to make a real difference,” says Matine. “But I had a spark and used my creativity to act upon what I thought was right. I’m committed to helping build a just society that values the power of unity.”

Sammie Vance

Sammie’s Buddy Bench Project

Sammie began her project as an 8-year-old, inspired after hearing how buddy benches were helping lonely kids. With support from her mom, Sammie located a company in Indiana that creates benches out of recycled plastic caps for $250 — a fraction of the cost of a new bench. She pitched the idea of a recycled bench to her school principal, who loved it, and then put out a call for caps. In less than two months, she’d collected 1,600 pounds of them — enough for three benches. Sammie continues to receive caps from around the world, sorting and weighing them to help other groups obtain benches. Schools and community organizations reach out to her daily, seeking support and information about her program. A Kiwanis group near Los Angeles recently asked for help in acquiring 500 benches over the next five years. Sammie is frequently asked to speak to groups of all ages about the power of each person to make a difference. “I’ve learned that if you want something, you need to go for it, be willing to ask for help, and never give up,” says Sammie. “If you can dream it, you can do it!”

Topher Jones

Lonesome Larry Project

“Socks to save the sockeye!” came to mind and Topher set to work. He reached out to nonprofits, Native American groups, and government officials to learn about the challenges facing salmon. He asked for help designing a Lonesome Larry logo and socks, and has since added bottle openers, decals, and keychains to his line. He sells his wares at Idaho Steelhead hockey games and local coffee shops, as well as on his website. His goal is to raise $100,000 to help the salmon. He also hopes to inspire people to take care of fish and the environment. He raises awareness by speaking to school and community groups. “I believe you don’t have to be an expert to help the world. You just need to be really motivated to do something,” says Topher. “I’ve learned that the world has so many problems but we can come up with solutions. Everyone can help make a difference.”

Viraj Mehta

Precision Medicine Initiatives

In creating the OncoVision app, Viraj realized the potential of emerging technologies to help patients with cancer – especially in the context of precision medicine, which focuses on personalized treatments. He established Precision Medicine Initiatives to explore technologies in this realm. In two years, he has created two web platforms. The first, miRTK, recommends personalized therapeutic treatments for cancers based on molecular analyses. The second, GLIA-Deep, which is patent-pending, holds promise for patients with glioblastoma, a deadly brain cancer that is difficult to treat with standard chemotherapy drugs. With GLIA-Deep, clinicians can upload a patient’s MRI scan and within seconds, receive an assessment of their genetics along with patient-specific drug recommendations. Viraj has won numerous awards for his work and has been invited to speak at international neuro-oncology conferences. He has validated GLIA-Deep at Mayo Clinic and is working on testing it in a clinical setting. “My journey with this work has allowed me to help people around the world and to accomplish things I didn’t think were possible,” says Viraj. “It has also taught me the importance of being grateful and has allowed me to honor my grandfather by spreading compassion in his name.”