Who is best known for raising awareness about Flint's ongoing water crisis?



There are several things we do in the hope for something good. We plant a sapling, hoping for it to turn into a huge tree, we study hard, hoping to find ‘the job’, and sometimes, we take a small step in the hope for a better tomorrow.



Mari writes a letter



Amariyanna ‘Mari’ Copeny, was just six years old when the water crisis started in Flint, Michigan, the U.S. She and her friends were no longer allowed to play in the water, and had to consume only bottled water.



Flint’s water crisis started in April 2014, when, to save costs, Michigan officials decided to switch Flint’s water supply from Lake Huron and the Detroit River to the Flint River without properly treating the water. This resulted in the people of Flint being exposed to dangerously high levels of bacteria and lead, creating health complications.



In March 2016, Mari and other residents of Flint were to visit Washington D.C. to witness their then Governor Rick Snyder testify before Congress about the Flint crisis. Before she started for the trip, Mari decided to write a letter to then President Barack Obama. Addressing herself as ‘Little Miss Flint’, Mari asked if the President or the First Lady Michelle Obama could meet Mari and the other residents during their visit to the capital, Mari also detailed the ordeals of the people.



However, the meeting couldn’t take place during their visit.



The President responds



Almost a month had passed since their visit to Flint when Mari’s mom received a call from an unknown number. It was a representative from the White House. He called to let her know that the President had read Mari’s letter and was moved by it. He informed her that the President would be personally replying to Mari’s letter by e-mail, and an official letter would be sent via post. Mari’s mother’s joy knew no bounds when the representative said that the President would like to meet Mari in Flint.



Mari, who was at school during the call, was informed by her mother bout the same. She decided on wearing the ‘Little Miss Flint’ sash that she had earned for winning a pageant.



And, the President did come to Flint a few days later to meet Mari and the other residents ad listen to their woes.



When she saw the President, she went running to him, and he lift her up and gave her a hug.



Mari’s letter to the President brought him to her home and led to stringent measures by the government to solve Flint’s water crisis.



In her own words, the President’s reply and subsequent trip to Flint proved her “that a kid can change the world.”



What makes her special?



Mari always hoped for the best. She wrote a letter to the President in the hope that she would meet him and he could help the people of Flint. And, one month later, she did meet him! The purpose of her letter was also fulfilled as the U.S. government took notice of Flint’s problems and began addressing them, through the problem still persists.



 



Picture Credit : Google


Who has been rapping against child marriage?



Music is a way of expression. Many people take to music, either as listeners or performers, in search of inner peace or to vent out their feelings.



Sonita Alizadeh took to rapping when she was 16, bringing out her first video ‘Daughters for Sale’, to raise her voice against child marriage. Now 22, Sonita continues to rap for the cause close to her heart.



What is she fighting for?



Child marriage is a social evil that has persisted for centuries. According to data released by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), as of February 2019, very year close to 12 million girls under 18 are married. Nearly 650 million girls or women alive today were married as children.



While progress has been made, with close to 25 million child marriages prevented in the last decade, there is still a long way to go.



She was almost one of them



Sonita was born in 1996 and grew up in Herat, Afghanistan, under the Taliban rule. When she was six, her family fled from Afghanistan to Iran. Here, he lived her life as an undocumented refugee and a child labourer.



Sonita worked but also educated herself. She learned to read and write at a non-governmental organisation for Afghan refugees in Iran. She took a keen interest in writing and poetry and was inspired by Iranian rapper Yas and American rapper Eminem.



When she was 10, her parents had arranged for her to be married. Sonita was deeply affected by this as her dream was to receive education. She would even see her friends being beaten for refusing child marriage. Thankfully, the arrangement fell out.



During this time, she found solace in music. She started writing pop songs but realising that she had a lot to say, decided to switch to rap.



She recorded songs about being a refugee, about the Afghanistan war, and about being a young woman. But she had to hide her lyrics in her backpack as Iran had a law prohibiting women from singing or rapping.



One day, she entered and won a U.S.-based competition to write a song for a music video encouraging young Afghans to vote. Still living in Tehran, she won $1,000 as prize money.



Daughters for Sale



Sonita thought things would get better when she won the competition. However, her mother, who had returned to Afghanistan, asked her to come home as she had found a future husband for her. Sonita was just 16.



She refused to marry at such a young age and penned down a song called ‘Daughters for Sale’. An Iranian filmmaker, Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami, who had come to know about Sonita, helped her to make a video and release the same. The music video garnered several views and became an anthem against the child-bride tradition. After the video gained international recognition, Sonita won a full scholarship to a boarding school in the U.S. She even convinced her parents to abort their quest to get her married.



Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami made a documentary on Sonita’s life, and released it in 2015. The film won the World Documentary Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2016.



Today, Sonita lives in the U.S. and advocates for ending child marriage that has reached curriculum on child marriage high school students in the U.S. Sonita has also spoken at several forums, including the World Bank’s Fragility Forum.



She continues to write songs and wishes to be a “lawyer who can rap”.



What makes her special?



Sonita took to music and used it to raise hr voice against child marriage. Despite the constant challenge she faced, he stood her ground and is today inching closer towards realising her dreams.



 



Picture Credit : Google


Who has created a video game and an online community for children with cancer?



 We often value most the thing or the person who helped us sail through our tough times. For Steven Gonzalez, that thing is video games.



His story



Steven Gonzalez, now 24, was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia when he was 12. For a chance to recover, Steven had to undergo intense chemotherapy and needed a bone marrow transplant. When the doctors looked at the international registry for bone marrow donors, there wasn’t a single match. Not one. For bone marrow to be a match, the donor and the recipient should generally have the same racial and ethnic background. Steven is of American, Italian, Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage.



Having tried and not found a donor, the doctors gave Steven a 2% chance of survival. However, they offered the family an option that might be Steven’s best shot at defeating leukaemia – cord blood transplant. Cord blood is the blood left over in the umbilical cord after birth. It has all the properties of regular blood, but it’s also rich in stem cells used to cure illnesses such as leukaemia, lymphoma and sickle cell anaemia.



A bone marrow needs to be an exact match, but cord blood gives a leeway.



A match was found and Steven’s surgery was a success. He recovered from cancer. However, his immune system had taken a beating and he needed to be in a sterile environment for 100 days. This meant isolation from the outside world.



Video game – the companion



In the 100 days that Steven remained isolated, he found solace in video games. While he was losing hair and body mass in the real world, he could be anyone in the world of video games. It gave him positivity and helped him connect with his friends. Meanwhile, he also mastered a few software.



As his isolation period was ending, he realised how much video games helped him and how it could help other children with illness. So he used his skills to create an eight-level video game called ‘Play Against Cancer’. In this game, players would fight cancer cells and overcome cancer.



He distributed the game to children in the hospital where he was admitted and realised that it helped them stay positive in their fight against cancer.



Sharing the positivity and virtually



Having witnessed the positive effects of video games on children, Steven, along with his uncle, in 2013, went on to start a non-profit called The Survivor Games to help kids out through their cancer experience. The main purpose of The Survivor Games is to “bring the healing power of video games to the cancer community by creating a social network with video games as its foundation”. It allows teens with cancer to connect with others like them and share their views on video games. It also lets teens catch up on gaming news.



Today, Steven is a cancer survivor for over a decade and is spreading cheer with video games.



What makes him special?



Steven is a survivor. He survived cancer at a young age and decided to help children fighting cancer by sharing with them the thing that helped him cope with his illness – video games.



 



Picture Credit : Google


Who developed a toxin-detection molecule?



An oil spill in the middle of the ocean can affect millions of marine and human lives.



On April 20, 2010, the world witnessed a large-scale industrial disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Considered the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, also known as the BP oil spill, discharged close to 4.9 million barrels of oil into the sea. In the aftermath, several marine species were affected and humans were asked to stay away from the coast for a while. The effects of the disaster are such that they can be seen even today in the form of deformed sea animals.



Keiana Cave, then a 15-year-old, living in New Orleans, Louisiana, was deeply affected by the news on television. Having always been interested in science and research, Keiana started to research about the oil spill. She learnt that when UV rays from the sun mix with the oil in the ocean, the oil becomes carcinogenic.



Finding a solution



Keiana entered her findings at a science fair in her hometown and she took home a prize for her research. She was encouraged by her biology teacher to pursue her research. Funded by GOMRI (Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative). Keiana started her research at the University of New Orleans the same year. Soon she worked with Tulane University, New Orleans. The research, titled A Method for Identifying the Photoproducts, Mechanisms, and Toxicity of Petroleum from the Deepwater Horizon by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography and DNPHi Derivatization, provided the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency with a method to identify nanotoxins (toxic nanoparticles) that form in seawater after oil spills.



In 2015, she won the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Category for her research on the BP oil spill.



Developing dispersant, and a company



Not stopping at just identifying nanotoxins, Keiana joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Global Entrepreneurship Bootcamp, in 2016. During her time there, Keiana developed an oil dispersant molecule (a mixture of emulsifiers and solvents that helps break oil into small droplets following an oil spill). Keiana started a company and pitched her start-up to investors. Her start-up, Mare, is a research initiative dedicated to developing solutions to large-scale spills such as the BP oil spill. The same year, Keiana’s research also received a funding of USD 1.2 million.



In 2017, Keiana featured in the Forbes 30 under 30 list, and in 2018, was named in Entrepreneur Magazine’s 2018 Young Millionaires List, following the acquisition of Mare in late 2017.



Today, Keiana has two two patents and two scientific papers in her name.



What makes her special?



From helping government agencies identify nanotoxins, to developing an oil dispersant molecule, Keiana used her concern and talent to tackle the impact of oil spills head-on.



 



Picture Credit : Google


Who is the founder of Kidzcationz?



At the end of a grueling year at school, a vacation is what most children look forward to. However, the planning and execution of the vacation is usually done by parents, and as adults, they might sometimes overlook just how child-friendly the places they plan to visit is.



When 12-year-old Bella Tipping from Dubbo, New South Wales, Australia, returned from a vacation to the U.S. with her parents, she wanted to share her experience. She followed her mother, Bernadette, to the computer and tried to log into TripAdvisor, the travel planning and review site. However, she was not allowed to register since she was under-age. Disappointed that she couldn’t voice her views about the hotels and the places she visited, Bella decided to fill this gap in the online space by creating her own travel review website for kids.



The birth of Kidzcationz



Bella wanted to create a site where children could provide honest feedback about different things related to travel and vacation giving them a more significant role in the family vacation decision-making process.



But before she could dive right into the project, her mother asked her to come up with a business plan to ensure the idea had merit. Firm on her idea of creating a travel review site, Bella sat down and wrote the entire business plan explaining what the website was about, how it was going to work, her target audience, and her exit strategy. Moved by her commitment and dedication, her parents decided to help her in her journey towards making her dream a reality.



Bella sat with her parents and chalked out the finer details of the website for nearly a year. She came up with a name, found a web designer and made decisions on the look and feel of the website. Bella was clear that the site was going to cater to children under 18, but could be accessed by anyone.



With help from her mother, Bella also managed to get affiliated with an international travel booking site.



She travelled extensively across Australia with her parents to collect data for her parents to collect data for her reviews on the site.



Kidzcationz was formally launched in late 2015.



Safety first



To ensure kid’s identities are safe, the site uses avatars for reviewers’ profiles. It has safety features that ensure children cannot share photographs or contact information with anyone else using the site.



A successful kidpreneur



Today, Kidzcationz is a successful platform with thousands of reviewers from around the world. The site also made Bella find a place for herself in the ‘Fortune 18 Under 18’ list of entrepreneurs 2016.



What makes her special?



Bella saw an opportunity and made the best use of it. Her commitment and dedication to fulfill her dream led to the birth of Kidzcationz, and her establishing herself as a successful entrepreneur.



 



Picture Credit : Google


Who became an entrepreneur of wacky socks at the age of just five?



It’s a beautiful feeling when one’s passion becomes their profession.



Sebastian Martinez was only five when he became an entrepreneur and started his company ‘Are you kidding?’. All because of his love wacky socks!



Never enough socks



Sebastian lives with his father Fabian Martinez, mother Rachel and brother Brandon in Kendall, Miami, the U.S. Since he was a toddler, Sebastian has had an obsession for colourful socks. His grandmother, who worked in retail, would get socks for him every time she would visit them. By the time he was five, Sebastian had more than 100 pairs of colourful socks.



One day, inspired by reading about a young girl who used her passion for design and love of sea animals to design fish-themed flip flops called fish flops, Rachel asked five-year-old Sebastian if he would like to design socks. Sebastian jumped at the idea and started designing wacky socks.



The beginnings



Soon, Sebastian wished for his designs to turn into real socks. And his mother, a publishing advertising executive, used her network to connect with a manufacturer in Guatemala that could produce samples.



In April 2014, a box full of shipment had arrived at their home. And in May 2014, Are you kidding? Was founded, and Sebastian became the chief executive of the company?



Sebastian and Rachel put up a stall at Sesame Step Children’s Shoes in Miami and decided to sell socks. Sebastian had trouble talking to strangers initially, but soon his brother Brandon, who has a knack for socialising and presenting, joined them and the three of them started attracting customers and saw an increase in their sales. That day, Brandon joined the company as the Director of Sales.



#KIDSHELPINGKIDS



Five years later, their company continues to be in business, selling their wacky socks all over the world.



The brothers also launched the Kids Helping Kids initiative, where the company partners with schools and provides tools for annual fundraisers benefiting various charity partners.



The company has also partnered with several non-profit organizations to design and sell cause-specific socks that support each organisation’s mission.



For their philanthropic work, the brothers have received a Commendation from the Mayor of The City of Miami.



What makes him special?



Sebastian made a profession for himself with his love for designing socks. Not just that, he also used his skills to partner with non-profits and raise money for them.



 



Picture Credit : Google