The Genius Generation

For as long as she can remember, 14-year-old Anna Du has had a deep love for the ocean. One day while collecting sea glass, Anna had an epiphany about how much plastic was polluting it. And she got to work. Since her realization Anna has developed an underwater robot that can detect microplastics deep in the ocean, started developing a model to predict where plastic pollution will occur, and written a book about her journey. Did we mention she’s 14?

Max Feldman believes the key to saving our planet is educating the next generation about the problems facing our environment today. And so that’s exactly what he does with his organization The Tomorrow Project (https://www.tomorrowprojectus.org/). They put on in-person and virtual workshops for kids all over the country to learn about the importance of being sustainable and how to live green lifestyles. What makes all of this even cooler is that Max and the entire team at The Tomorrow Project are all high school or college students.

At just 16 years old Adithi Raghavan founded her organization BEEducated (https://www.thebeeducated.org/) when she learned just how serious the plight of the honeybee is (their populations are declining sharply). Through BEEducated, Adithi has created “The Million Pollinator Garden Challenge” to empower young people all over the country to create bee-friendly gardens in their very own backyards using kits that Adithi and her team send out.

When Sophia Kianni was in middle school she took a trip to visit relatives in Iran. She was shocked by the levels of pollution she saw there. The more she looked into it, the more alarmed she became. The effects of climate change are particularly extreme in the Middle East. And yet when Sophia brought up her concerns to her relatives, she discovered they knew almost nothing about climate change. Sophia was determined to educate her relatives, so she started translating scientific information into Farsi to help her relatives understand. This experience led to the founding of Sophia’s organization, Climate Cardinals (https://www.climatecardinals.org/) which now has over 6,000 youth volunteers translating and sourcing climate information into over 100 languages.

From a very early age, Devin Martin has been obsessed with space. In the summer of 2020, Devin made his dream come true completing a summer internship at NASA and working directly on the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover. Watching the rover successfully launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida was a huge triumph for Devin, but his journey hasn’t been easy. He has had to face adversity, including racism, along his journey.

Chander Payne had a life changing moment in his high school cafeteria (how many of us can say that?). He noticed his fellow classmates didn’t have access to healthy foods like fruit and vegetables - so he decided to grow them himself. Chander started an urban farm at his high school, growing fresh fruits and veggies right where they were needed the most. That project soon blossomed into a full-fledged organization called Urban Beet (www.urbanbeet.org/), creating urban farms in other schools and homeless shelters in the Washington D.C. area.

The summer before her freshman year of high school, Kyla Guru discovered a unique passion for cybersecurity at the NSA GenCyber Camp. It was there she discovered that 90% of cyberattacks were due to human error. To combat this problem, Kyla founded Bits N’ Bytes Cybersecurity Education (https://www.bitsnbytes.us.com/) whose mission is educating and equipping people with the cybersecurity skills they need for the future. In addition to giving speeches and holding workshops, Bits N’ Bytes also designs downloadable lessons for teachers, so they can spread the word about cybersecurity to their own students.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and schools closed, high school junior Zachary Siegel found himself with a lot more time on his hands. He used that free time to explore his passions (like computer programming), but quickly realized this was also an opportunity to share his passions with others. So he founded The Youth Passion Project (https://www.youthpassionproject.org/). It’s a platform for high school students to teach classes to young learners about the things they are most passionate about. The classes are completely free and cover a huge variety of topics from video game design to philosophy to Bollywood dance. Since its founding in March of 2020, Zach’s organization has grown exponentially, with thousands of students enrolled and chapters across the US, Canada, and South Korea!

When Hannah Lucas was 15 years old, she developed POTS, a medical condition that caused her to faint without warning. The anxiety around her condition combined with bullying and harassment from her classmates led Hannah to fall into a deep depression, culminating in an attempt to end her own life. During this incredibly low moment in her life, Hannah had an idea: What if there was a way to immediately alert the people around her that she was not ok? Aided by her tech-savvy brother, Charlie, Hannah’s idea came to life. The result is the notOK App™, a digital panic button which has now helped tens of thousands of others struggling with mental illness.

While studying abroad in Japan, 16-year-old Luna Abadia saw the effects of climate change first-hand. Typhoons were getting stronger, snow becoming rarer, and traditional crops were no longer able to grow. This inspired Luna to act. She entered a speech competition and wrote about the importance of combating climate change. Her speech got a lot of attention and Luna became a national finalist. Realizing the power her voice could have, when Luna returned home to Oregon, she founded the Effective Climate Action Project (https://www.effectiveclimateaction.org/) or ECAP for short - a youth-led organization working to increase awareness of effective solutions to climate change.