Wednesday, June 15th, 2016 by Raluca Besliu
Talia Leman wanted to help the victims of the destructive and deadly Hurricane Katrina. Determined to help as much as possible, the ten year old planned to raise $1 million, which for most would seem a ludicrously ambitious goal, especially for a child her age. Talia managed to rally a children-led movement that reported not […]
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Wednesday, June 8th, 2016 by Raluca Besliu
Marian Bechtel, a 21-year-old student at Bryn Mawr College, is a pianist, scientist and anti-war activist. The young woman from Lancaster, Pennsylvania invented an inexpensive, quick and simple minesweeper that detects buried landmines using sound waves. The device is a standard metal detector with high-sensitivity microphones and a seismic detector attached to it. Marian’s […]
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Sunday, June 7th, 2015 by Raluca Besliu
Imagine a world where a tailored fit is the norm rather than a luxury, where companies and individuals create customized products, and size ‘me’ replaces ‘small, medium, and large.’ Through its cloud-based, 3D technology, Volumental is turning what seems like a dream world into reality. The company was started by Caroline Walerud, a 25-year-old Swedish-American, […]
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Thursday, April 23rd, 2015 by Raluca Besliu
In some countries around the world, such as Egypt, Kenya, and Romania, the education system is examination-oriented, meaning that test scores, rather than learning, become the ultimate goal of education. According to a report of the International Journal for Innovation Education and Research, this ultimately distorts students’ motivation and learning, by overstressing the importance of […]
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Sunday, April 19th, 2015 by Raluca Besliu
Tica Darie is a 22-year-old Romanian changemaker, who is proposing and building the path of sustainable development for the mining town of Rosia Montana, which has recently been a battlefield between a Canadian mining company and Romania’s citizens. The Canadian company, Gabriel Resources Ltd., was planning to use 40 tons of cyanide a day to […]
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Monday, March 2nd, 2015 by Raluca Besliu
A 2014 UNICEF report emphasized that Nepal is still among the top ten countries in the world, where child marriage is practiced. A staggering forty-one percent of girls marry before turning eighteen, while ten percent wed by the age of fifteen. Early weddings cause considerable hardships for girls, many of whom drop out of school and face domestic & sexual […]
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Friday, February 13th, 2015 by Raluca Besliu
Most people would not sacrifice the safety and comfort of their lives to venture to a foreign country and help those who are most in need. Kayla Mueller was not like most people. Her heart beat in sync with those of innocent people undergoing the atrocities of unfair wars around the world. She couldn’t bear allowing that […]
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Thursday, February 12th, 2015 by Raluca Besliu
Many young people want to become journalists, but find it difficult to gain experience and break into a profession dominated by established journalists with years of expertise behind them. Ashley M. Williams, a 26-year-old journalist, who has published for NBC News, WBAL Radio and USA TODAY, understood this issue and decided to create a platform […]
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Wednesday, February 11th, 2015 by Raluca Besliu
In 2010, a severe drought devasted the Eastern part of Kenya, Ethiopia and some parts of of Somalia. It created one of the most severe food security emergencies that humanity had ever seen. In turn, the Western part of Kenya saw a bumper harvest of maize. Some crops rotted in the field, due to an […]
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Saturday, January 17th, 2015 by Raluca Besliu
COBURWAS International Youth Organization to Transform Africa (CIYOTA) is a Ugandan-based non-profit started by three refugee youth in secondary school to address the educational problems and other challenges faced by Congolese refugees living in the Kyangwali refugee camp. The nonprofit, launched in 2005, now has over 10,000 members and volunteers from over 40 African countries […]
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Saturday, November 22nd, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
In Uganda, children with special needs are systematically prevented from succeeding academically and fulfilling their potential. There are an estimated 184,000 children in the country, who have some type of disability making it difficult for them to learn. These students often drop out of school due to poor performance, as they face constant physical abuse […]
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Monday, November 10th, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Xander Gieryn is a 22-year-old from Wisconsin, living in Indianapolis, IN for the past four years. He describes himself as a service worker, concerned citizen, neighbor and student focused on building strong community relationships, in order to create a more sustainable way of living. He believes in bringing people together “through place-making, creating spaces Alongside […]
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Sunday, September 7th, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Francis Ssuuna is a young social entrepreneur and a member of the Butterfly Project in Kampala, Uganda, training social entrepreneurship to young Ugandans from remote rural villages and disadvantaged urban slum districts, since 2009.Originally from a small Ugandan village, Lyantonde, Francis now lives in the Acholi Quarter, an underprivileged part of Kampala, where most people survive by selling stone quarried […]
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Tuesday, August 12th, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Samuel Lubangakene is an 18-year-old Ugandan Ashoka Youth Venturer, who has developed a creative computer game project, called The Children Mind Development Project (CMDP). The initiative provides multiple brain training games, such as Sudoku, Space Chem and Braid, as well as computer training, including in game-making software, as an alternative to violent video games for […]
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Sunday, August 3rd, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Bogdan Pandea is a 23-year-old student in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, who runs a mobile coffee shop on his bike, called Captain Bean. Through his initiative, the young Romanian aims provide customers locally brewed coffee that best suits their needs in a professional and interactive way. Bogdan started dreaming of opening Captain Bean in 2012, when he […]
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Monday, June 23rd, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Karrie Brown fell in love with Wet Seal clothes at the age of 15. Karrie, who has Down syndrome, thought the clothes were cute, comfy, and itch-free, and she started dreaming of the day when she could become a model for her favorite clothing store. Relentless in her vision, Karrie managed to turn her dream […]
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Sunday, June 15th, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Sara Policastro is a freshman at George Washington University, pursuing a degree in Human Services and English. She is also one of the founders of the Student Center for African Research and Resolutions (SCARR). Sara is currently the Director of Operations of this student-led and run think tank that creates innovative solutions for solving some […]
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Saturday, June 14th, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Mocanite, narrow gauge railways, trailed stunning mountainous areas to connect cities across Transylvania, Romania. The Mocanite, whose locomotives were steam-powered, were built for cargo and passenger services. The longest Mocanita at the time it was built ran for 123 km between Sibiu, Agnita and Sighisoara, crossing the […]
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Sunday, June 1st, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Harnoor Gill is a 16-year-old from Georgetown, Canada, with a passion for volunteering. He was born in Hong Kong to Indian parents, but has lived in Canada most of his life. Currently in secondary school, Harnoor has been volunteering since he was three. At that tender age, he started going door-to-door to sell cookies to […]
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Sunday, May 4th, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Since he was very young, 20-year-old Luis Fernando Cruz was fascinated by the idea of becoming an inventor. He wanted to improve society through his creations. His determination to help society was heightened by the fact that he was born and raised in Honduras. Life in his country allowed him to understand the issues that […]
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Sunday, May 4th, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
When he was 9-years-old, Dylan Mahalingam founded Lil’MDGs, an international development organization aiming to leverage the power of the Internet and social media to educate, engage, inspire and empower children and young people from across the world to work together to advance the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs were eight international […]
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Sunday, April 13th, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
When one of his close friends lost his eyesight in an accident at the age of 15, Khaled Shady from Egypt, then a teenager, became determined to help. At the age of 20, Khaled, alongside three other computer engineer graduates at the Menoufia University, created a wearable belt with a Bluetooth-connected headset for the blind […]
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Sunday, April 6th, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Whenever going to the market place in her native Nigeria, 22-year-old Adamma Umeofia couldn’t help but observe the inconsistent, disorganized and aesthetically displeasing way in which butchers conducted their work. They often had a small box for cutting the meat and a separate place to display it and bag it for their customers. She gradually […]
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Sunday, April 6th, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Tallia Storm, a 15-year-old from a small Scottish village near Glasgow, has always known that her passion in life is jazz music. She believes that, if you are passionate about something, then you have to be constantly ready to seize any opportunity that presents itself to make your dream come true. That’s why, before she […]
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Sunday, March 30th, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
We met Alex Sheen, the young founder of because I said I would, at his office in Rocky River, Ohio on a Sunday afternoon. The office area, spacious and relaxed, was generously offered to him for free by a local philanthropist, who reached out to Alex, after hearing about his initiative.
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Sunday, March 23rd, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Fraser Doherty, a 24-year-old Scot, is one of the leading jam makers in the United Kingdom (U.K.).He learned the art of jam making from his grandmother in Edinburgh when he was 14. Passionate about making jam, he decided to create his own company, SuperJam, and started selling his products door to door, at farmers’ markets […]
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Friday, March 21st, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Starting at the age of 13, Surbhi Sarna experienced such intense abdominal pain that she would faint. The pain was sharp; it felt like being stabbed with a knife, whose handle was constantly being twisted. Doctors first assumed Surbhi’s pain was appendicitis, then they presumed it might be ovarian cancer. The only way to determine […]
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Friday, March 14th, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Mohamed Zaazoue, a 26-year-old Egyptian doctor, is creating a cultural shift in attitudes toward health and health care through his organization, Healthy Egyptians, which conducts health education campaigns to prevent diseases like pneumonia, the lead disease killing children under 5. According to UNICEF, around 40,000 children in Egypt die of pneumonia each year. Ironically, both […]
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Friday, March 14th, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Few people would think of reconfiguring the design of the traditional bicycle, a product whose simplicity and efficiency seem to have reached its pinnacle and did not require any changes. Tyler Hadzicki did not agree. He believed there was room for improvement. So, when he was 14-years-old, he decided to reinvent the bicycle wheel, by […]
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Saturday, March 1st, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Noorjahan Akbar is a 22-year-old Afghani woman, who is the co-founder of Young Women for Change (YWC). The organization, started in 2011, was dedicated to advocating for rights of Afghan women at a national and international level and mobilizing men and women to speak up for the human rights of women. While working for the […]
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Thursday, February 13th, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Arthur Zang, a 26-year-old Cameroonian, is the inventor of the Cardiopad, the first fully touchscreen medical tablet made in Cameroon and in Africa that could save millions of lives around the continent and beyond. The Cardiopad is especially crucial in countries like his own, which only has 30 heart surgeons for a population of around […]
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Wednesday, February 12th, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Most are familiar with the dazzling leotards, skirts, and costumes in which ice skaters perform. Zahra Lari, an 18-year-old from the United Arab Emirates, is making an addition to her outfit: a hijab. Zahra Lari, an 18-year-old girl from the United Arab Emirates, is the first figure skater from the Gulf region to participate in international […]
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Wednesday, February 12th, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Anita Haidary is a 21-year-old woman from Kabul, Afghanistan, who is the founder of an organization called Young Women for Change, fighting for women’s rights in her home country. Anita is passionate about film-making and the power and value it holds among its viewers as well as about understanding the complicated political and social systems […]
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Monday, February 3rd, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
A journalism student passionate about photography and traveling, 22-year-old Alex Iacob is the creator of a blog about urban exploration in his hometown of Bucharest, Romania. Alex explores overlooked or forgotten urban spaces such as old bourgeois residencies, factories and monuments, all left to decay in the communist and post-communist eras. Because his explorations are […]
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Thursday, January 23rd, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
16-year-old Emmanuel Bishop is a prodigy violinist and polyglot—who speaks English, Spanish, French and Latin—with Down syndrome. Despite his genetic condition, which occurs when an individual has a full or partial extra copy of chromosome 21, he is an ambitious young man who lets nothing stand in the way of his dreams. Emmanuel, an only […]
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Thursday, January 16th, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Yetunde Adeola Odugbesan-Omede is an extremely busy and involved 26-year-old woman.She is the Founder and Executive Director of Young Woman’s Guide, Inc., the founder and CEO of Yetunde Global Consulting and Creator of Putting Your Best Self Forward. She is Nigerian-American and her passions include leadership, women empowerment, human rights, politics, writing and public speaking. […]
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Friday, January 10th, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Khalida Brohi is a 24-year-old entrepreneur and women’s rights activists from Balochistan, a province in Pakistan. She is the founder of Sughar, an organization based out of Balochistan and Sindh aiming to empower tribal women, by developing their skills and providing them income-generating and learning opportunities. The ultimate aim is to enable them to take […]
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Friday, January 10th, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Tim Harris is the 27-year-old owner of Tim’s Place, a thriving and popular restaurant in Albuquerque, New Mexico that serves ‘breakfast, lunch and hugs’ and calls itself ‘the friendliest restaurant in the world.’ Born with Down syndrome, Tim started dreaming of opening up his own restaurant ever since he was 14. Tim may be the […]
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Wednesday, January 1st, 2014 by Raluca Besliu
Moziah Bridges started his own bow tie company, Mo’s Bows, in Memphis, Tennessee in 2011, when he was only 9-years-old. At that age, his grandmother started teaching him how to sow, in order to help him make his own bow tie out of scrap material, after he couldn’t find any cool and fun ones on […]
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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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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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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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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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