Saturday, December 28th, 2013 by Ravneet Sandhu
“It will be very hard to convince everyone in the world to handle their plastics responsibly, but what we humans are very good in, is inventing technical solutions to our problems. And that’s what we’re doing.” – Boyan Slat Boyan Slat, a 19-year-old from the Dutch town of Delft, combines environmentalism, creativity and technology to […]
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Friday, December 27th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Thirteen-year-old Logan LaPlante has an education like few other teenagers in the world. He is hack-schooled. The teenager has a profound admiration for hackers, which he does not perceive as computer aficionados, who spread viruses and break into official website, but as “people who challenge and change the systems to make them work differently, to […]
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Friday, December 27th, 2013 by Charlie Butts
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Thursday, December 26th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Kuha’o Case, a 17-year-old piano prodigy from Hawaii, has been blind since infancy. Born two months premature, Kuha’o had to undergo a necessary operation, which saved his life, but took his vision. The young Hawaiian can play a song note for note after hearing it only once or twice, and the song remains forever imprinted […]
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Tuesday, December 24th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Sixteen-year-old Elif Bilgin from Turkey spent two years developing a way to create bio-plastic out of banana peels, as a replacement of the traditional petroleum-based plastics. Petroleum-based plastics harm the environment in countless ways, including by representing 90 percent of all trash floating on the ocean’s surface, with 46,000 pieces of plastic per square mile.
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Tuesday, December 24th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Anton Abele is the youngest Member of Parliament (MP) in the world. At the age of 18, he was elected as an MP for Stockholm County in the 2010 general elections. He represents the Moderate Party, which he has stressed, is in a process of renewal, as it is introducing increasing numbers of young people. […]
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Tuesday, December 24th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
How young is too young to be a Member of Parliament (MP)? In 2012, at the tender age of 19, Proscovia Oromait from Uganda became Africa’s youngest MP and the second youngest legislator in the world. Younger than her is only Swedish MP Anton Abele, elected in the Swedish Parliament in 2010 at the age […]
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Friday, December 6th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Aya Chebbi is a 26-year-old Tunisian blogger and activist, whose blog, Proudly Tunisian, translates her passion to serve, inspire and strive for human rights, peace and social justice. She was recently declared one of Africa’s 28 most promising women leaders by the Moremi Initiative’s Leadership Development (MILEAD). Aya started blogging during Tunisia 2011 Revolution, when […]
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Friday, November 29th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Following his surprise presidential victory in June 2013, Hassan Rouhani promised to bring change and moderation in Iran, make tangible changes in his first 100 days of office, save the economy, and ensure that international sanctions were lifted by ending the nuclear standoff. November 25, 2013 marked the first 100 days of Rouhani’s presidency. While […]
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Monday, November 25th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Best Aiyorworth, a 21-year-old woman from Uganda, has won the 2013 Anzisha Grant Prize, worth $25,000 for the initiative she is leading: Girls’ Power Micro Lending Organization (GIPOMO). Through her business, Best aims to support girls in the Nebbi District of Northern Uganda by helping their mothers, through loans offered to start or improve their […]
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Tuesday, November 12th, 2013 by Charlie Butts
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Friday, October 11th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
The food system today is not the one previous generations were used to. Genetic engineering and the agrochemical complex have “changed the way our food is produced, distributed and marketed, and, in many cases, not for the better” according to Greenpeace. For instance, the use of pesticides currently not only pollutes streams and wells and […]
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Friday, September 20th, 2013 by Charlie Butts
You would think that if you checked your Facebook page just before your big race in the Olympics that you would find all kinds of encouragement from your fellow countrymen… but what Tahmina Kohistani found was hate messages. As the first ever woman to compete in the Olympics from Afghanistan, she felt terrific pressure to “go […]
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Wednesday, September 18th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Meradith Leebrick is the co-founder of Abriendo Mentes, a non-profit organization focused on empowering people in Guanacaste, Costa Rica to access enhanced education and employment opportunities, helping local families to achieve economic stability. The organization offers local residents the skills they need to enhance their lives through an innovative and engaging education program. Immediately after […]
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Wednesday, August 28th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Jalen Brown, 18, the National Vice-President of the Future Educators Association (FEA) and the founder of the Student Ambassador Association (SAA), aims to provide resources and guidance to students all over the United States. The recent graduate of Maple Heights High School in Maple Heights, Ohio became involved with FEA, an organization whose goal is […]
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Monday, August 12th, 2013 by Charlie Butts
After years of uncertainty, Chaza Banda’s lifelong dream to go to college is finally materializing. Chaza’s father, an international student from Zambia sent for her in 2005. Just nine months later he died, long before he could complete the process that would make the Banda’s permanent residents of the states. “Since that process was never […]
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Friday, August 2nd, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Craig Lewis is one of the inventors of Sprav, a smart water meter that allows users to determine, in real time, shower water and energy usage. Based on these elements, shower costs are calculated and become instantly available for users. Because the young inventor’s device uses a Bluetooth module, users are able to upload their […]
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Friday, August 2nd, 2013 by Jordan Doll
Youths as young as 14 want the vote. Some of them are making progress. In May, Takoma Park, a progressive community in Maryland, lowered the voting age from 18 to 16 for municipal elections. Though only affecting city elections, the success was, articulated by Jeffery Nadel “in legislative terms, the first big step.” Jeffery Nadel […]
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Saturday, July 20th, 2013 by Jordan Doll
Alexandra Brodsky, a recent graduate of Yale University, is taking a stand against sexual violence. Sexual assault is frighteningly common in the US, especially on college and university campuses. The data indicates that one in four US college women have survived rape or attempted rape. Still, estimates suggest less than 5% of these assaults are reported […]
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Saturday, July 20th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
California native and eighteen-year-old Eesha Khare invented a super-capacitor, which acts as an energy storage and transfer device. The super-capacitor could revolutionize the way we charge and use mobile devices. Eesha’s device can last for 10,000 charge-recharge cycles, compared to the 1,000 cycles of conventional rechargeable batteries. While so far, her device has only been […]
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Wednesday, July 17th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Jamal Edwards is a leading young British entrepreneurs. He started a media empire with his youth broadcasting channel, SB.TV, at the tender age of 15. Now 22, Jamal has an estimated fortune of £8m, runs a production team of ten people, and has worked with stars like Jessie J and Nicki Minaj. He played a […]
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Tuesday, July 16th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
In March 2013, the British Department for Education revealed new draft guidelines for key stages 1 to 3, covering children under 14, that excluded debate about climate change from the national curriculum. Outraged by this decision, 15-year-old Esha Marwaha, a student at the Heathland School in Hounslow and a member of the UK Youth Climate Coalition […]
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Tuesday, July 16th, 2013 by Jordan Doll
UPDATE– NIYA’s Activism Continues. View the original article in the second half of this post. Youth involved in NIYA or the National Immigration Youth Alliance continue to fight for what they believe. Claudia Munoz, a 27 year-old member of NIYA, was intentionally arrested two months ago. A young woman who immigrated from Mexico to the […]
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Sunday, July 14th, 2013 by Charlie Butts
In a powerful and moving speech at the United Nations, Malala Yousafzai called on women and girls not to rely on men to provide them education, but to demand it themselves. She said,“Malala Day is not my day, today is for… every girl who has stood for her rights.” Showing signs of a nearly complete […]
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Tuesday, July 9th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Sixteen-year-old Lisa Peng is taking on the Chinese government, in order to produce the release of her father, Peng Ming, a prominent human rights and democracy activist. Lisa, who is a student at Laurel School in Cleveland, Ohio, last saw her father in 2004. Mr. Peng was travelling to Myanmar when he was imprisoned for life, after […]
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Tuesday, July 2nd, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Laura Deming, originally from New Zealand, first become interested in aging when she was 8-years-old and learned about death. She recalls: “When I was eight, my mom told me about death and I couldn’t stop crying for days. What a tragedy! Life is incredible, but death is inevitable. I already knew biology was fantastic fun. […]
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Friday, June 28th, 2013 by Jordan Doll
National immigration reform is on the agenda in Washington DC. If passed, reform will likely include tighter border security and a path to citizenship for immigrants who entered the country illegally. Reform was constructed and will be hashed out by congressmen, lobbyists and other breeds of politicians. But, as the bill slowly progresses through the […]
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Wednesday, June 26th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Brothers John and Mark Lewandowski may soon launch a global health revolution, by inventing a portable, cheap, fast and easy to use device for early malaria diagnosis. Their invention may not only prevent the death of millions who have already contracted the disease, but also lead to a drastic reduction of incidences of malaria. Malaria […]
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Sunday, June 23rd, 2013 by Charlie Butts
A mammoth youth-led movement is underway to ramp up the pressure on governments across organize the muscle of tens of thousands of young people to force governments to answer why they haven’t acted on climate change yet. Five hundred students from more than one hundred countries are gathering in Istanbul, Turkey beginning Monday, June 24, 2013, to […]
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Saturday, June 22nd, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Roxanne Lasker-Hall from Cleveland, Ohio is already an award winning movie script writer. When she was only 16, she participated in and won the National Scriptwriting Contest in Scenarios USA Youth/Film Industry Collaboration with her movie script, “Speechless.” Her script, which she wrote specifically for the contest, addressed a spiky and rarely addressed reality in […]
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Friday, June 21st, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
In 2012, 12-year-old Jordan Casey from Waterford, Ireland, became the youngest iOS app developer in Europe and one of the youngest in the world, when his first game, Alien Ball Vs Humans, went on sale on the Apple App Store. The game, inspired by Space Invaders, went to the top of the Apple iTunes store in Ireland. […]
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Friday, June 21st, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Shea Gouldd, an 18-year-old, from Delray Beach, Florida, had an interest in cooking since before she can remember. According to her mother, as a toddler she preferred to watch cooking shows rather than cartoons. Her mother recalls that Shea always wanted to help make dinner. Her mom would let her snip green beans with scissors, […]
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Wednesday, June 12th, 2013 by Jordan Doll
College students and recent graduates have a new outlet for turning their software ideas into a profitable business. We all know the leap from idea to profit is challenging to say the least. Most young entrepreneurs don’t have the resources or expertise to take the step. Of those who do, only a handful manage to […]
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Tuesday, June 4th, 2013 by Jordan Doll
Riley Ennis had a passion for biomedical engineering long before he considered majoring in it at Dartmouth College. As a high school student, Ennis spent three years on a cancer vaccine that teaches the human body to recognize and remove tumors similarly to how the immune system attacks bacteria. The work caught the attention of […]
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Tuesday, June 4th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
When he was 14-years-old, William LeGate developed an iPhone application called Fake-A-Text, which received over one million hits and was featured in the New York Times. The app, which continues to top the charts in its category, allows its users to send fake texts messaged to the iPhone or iPhod Touch and has mostly been […]
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Monday, June 3rd, 2013 by Charlie Butts
Kanhaiya Kumari was born in an Indian prison where he was held until he was six years old. When he was finally released he was placed in a juvenile home. He never stopped thinking of his mother, Vijaya. She was left in prison for a crime she said she never did. But since she couldn’t […]
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Saturday, June 1st, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
When he was 13-years-old, Anshul Samar developed Elementeo, a board-based card game, to help children learn chemistry and science in a fun way, bringing chemical elements and compounds to life by assigning them individual personalities. The goal of the game is to capture the opponent’s electrons and reduce them to zero. On the game’s website, the […]
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Friday, May 31st, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Savannah Britt became the youngest magazine publisher in the world when, at the tender age of 12, she started publishing a hard copy magazine entitled Girlpez Fashion Magazine, to accompany her website for teen girls, Girlpez.com. By then already, Savannah was not a newcomer when it came to the publishing world. She had published her […]
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Monday, May 27th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
When he was in the 7th grade and taking Saturday courses on aerodynamics at Northwestern University, Jonny Cohen noticed school buses’ inefficient design and was alarmed by the amount of exhaust they generated. He suddenly got an idea on how to make them more efficient, in order to slow carbon emissions, increase gas mileage and […]
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Friday, May 24th, 2013 by Charlie Butts
It was April 1777, one year after the Declaration of Independence was signed. Sybil Ludington had just turned sixteen. She desperately wanted to do more to help her brand new country defeat the British. Already she was spinning wool so her family didn’t have to buy cotton goods from the British. For the same reason […]
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Friday, May 24th, 2013 by Charlie Butts
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Friday, May 24th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
In 2012, 9-year-old Martha Payne, a Scottish schoolgirl from Lochgilphead, discovered her passion for writing after publishing a newspaper article on the Titanic’s sinking. Source: Marysmeals.org.uk Looking for a way to write everyday, Martha and her dad created a blog that documented Martha’s school lunches. Martha was coming home hungry because of the poor quality […]
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Thursday, May 23rd, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Hannah Taylor was five years-old when her and her mother drove passed a man eating out of a garbage can in Winnipeg, Canada. Puzzled, Hannah asked her mother why he would do this. She introduced Hannah to the dire reality of homelessness. For the rest of the year, the story of the man troubled Hannah […]
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Thursday, May 23rd, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Nineteen-year-old Ionut Budisteanu from Romania developed a model for a low-cost self-driving car that uses artificial intelligence. Ionut is not the first one to put out a prototype for fully autonomous vehicles, which Google Inc has been working to develop since 2010. Google’s model would be extremely expensive, costing around $75,000, due to its use of a […]
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Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
For 8th Grade version click here Thirteen-year-old Cecilia Cassini from Encino, California was the youngest designer in the U.S. and one of the youngest in the world, when she launched her own label in 2009, at the age of 9. By 2011, she had already created over 500 original pieces and dressed many celebrities, including Heidi Klum […]
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Monday, May 20th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
When he was two years old, Cris “Kesz” Valdez’s father forced him to scavenge at a dump site in Cavite City, situated not far from Manila. His father used to beat Kesz and use the money collected for drugs and alcohol. When he turned four, Kesz ran away from home and lived on the streets, continuing […]
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Friday, May 17th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Cosmin Mihaiu, a 23-year-old Romanian, is on his way to revolutionizing physical therapy. With three other classmates from the Software Engineering Department at the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Mihaiu has developed a computer software program called the Medical Interactive Recovery Assistant (MIRA), which helps patients undergoing physiotherapy recuperate faster and have fun doing it. In an interview […]
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Thursday, May 16th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
At the beginning of high school, Joel Mwale, currently 20-year-old, caught dysentery from drinking contaminated water provided by his municipal council during Kenya’s annual dry season. As he was slowly recovering from the illness, he started worrying that this disease would “keep on happening, year in, year out, what if next year the same problem […]
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Wednesday, May 15th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Dalumuzi Mhlanga is a young Zimbabwean man empowering, mobilizing and inspiring the youth in his country “to work together beyond socioeconomic barriers so that they can lead community development efforts.” Dalumuzi is a student of Politics, Psychology and Sociology at Harvard University, who is currently on an exchange program at the University of Oxford, UK, as […]
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Wednesday, May 15th, 2013 by Raluca Besliu
Through his organization, CoderDojo, 20-year-old James Whelton from Cork, Ireland, is helping provide a strong IT education to young people from around the world. Currently operating in around 24 worldwide and helping over 16,000 people, the CoderDojo runs completely free not-for-profit coding classes for young people, with ages ranging from 7 to 18. These courses […]
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