2020 YOUTH LEADERSHIP AWARDS WINNER BIOS

All student winners are members of 21st Century Leaders and participants of 21CL programs

Aylah Birks, a junior at Twiggs County High School in Twiggs County, is the founder of The MCDC Project and an advocate in her community. She established a new mentoring program, The MCDC (Mentor, Channel, Develop and Connect) Project, after noticing a lack of mentorship resources in her school. With just 250 students in the entire high school, The MDCS Project provides a safe space for all students 7- 12th grade to channel their inner passions, connect with mentors who help them expand their talents, and develop a plan for their post high school life. Ths MDCS Project allows 12-15 high school students to serve as mentors to the 7th-8th grade students and incorporates volunteers from the community, including school alumni, to provide support and serve as resources. Aylah is a dedicated volunteer and advocate within her small community, serving in both local and state political campaigns as junior photographer, spearheads clothing drives, plays music and sings with residents at the local nursing homes, reads with elementary students, and teaches children through private tutoring lessons in the summer. Aylah also advocates against human sex trafficking and bullying, and is an advocate for mental health, comprehensive sex education, voting, and social diversity through her Instagram show, Tell Me More with Aylah. She’s also county representative for Justice For Girls Organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Inc., and the Georgia Campaign For Adolescent Power and Potential. Within school, Aylah has been an active member of 21CL’s Club at Twiggs County for the past three years, is President of Beta Club and President and Trumpet Section Leader of Marching Band and a member of several school clubs and sports teams. Her goals are to expand The MCDC Project to elementary school students by 2021, raise awareness on sex education and relationships, and graduate as valedictorian. Aylah aspires to attend North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and Vanderbilt University, and run her own business as a neurosurgeon or defense attorney.

Luisa de Macedo, a senior at Chattahoochee High School in Fulton County, promotes Latin culture through her numerous volunteer initiatives. As a bilingual Brazilian-American, she is using her unique resources to help others while sharing and exchanging their cultures. In 2018, Luisa co-founded a volunteer project through her church, AGAPE Church in Lawrenceville, GA, that teaches English to native Spanish speakers. Through this tutoring service, she has helped 32 Spanish speaking individuals to learn English and better connect with the world around them. In 2019, she founded the Spanish Club at her school in order to spread cultural awareness among her generation of peers. Luisa says connecting with her peers opened her worldview, and further emphasized to her the important role diversity plays in our lives. In addition, she serves in her school as president of her Spanish Club, Events Coordinator for her National Honor Society Chapter, and is an avid member of her school’s drama troupe and musical theatre class. Outside of school, she is a proud member of the 21st Century Leaders’ Youth Ambassadors, volunteers in the community, and is a skilled ballet and pointe dancer. Luisa will attend the University of Georgia in the fall, where she hopes to pursue a pre-medical path and leverage her passion for biology to become a leader in the medical industry.

Emily Demps, a junior at North High School in Fulton County, is the founder of Smart Brown Girls Club. Smart Brown Girls Club was created in 2018 as a mentoring group for 5th grade girls at KIPP Woodson Park Academy, located in one of the most economically disadvantaged and underserved communities in Atlanta. The mission of Emily’s club is to mentor and empower young girls and equip them to be successful in school and in their future endeavors. Through Smart Brown Girls Club, Emily has invested over 50 hours in planning and mentoring the girls through small group discussions, activities and sessions on topics ranging from positive self-image, self-esteem, personal hygiene, navigating challenging social situations, and the importance of a good education. Emily created a community drive that benefitted around 100 students school-wide. She organized a month-long drive to collect dresses for the girls to wear at their fifth grade prom and collected donations and funds to purchase school supplies, backpacks and clothing from the school’s Amazon wish list. Emily plans to establish a similar mentoring program for the students at Los Niños Primero, where she volunteers as a teaching assistant. She received the Gold President’s Volunteer Service Award in May 2019, after clocking over 700 volunteer hours through services such as a Transit Small Group leader at Church/North Point Ministries and a Regional Co-Leader for Operation Christmas Child, and is a 2020 Atlanta Intown 20 Under 20 Honoree. Emily’s future aspirations include staying involved with her volunteer activities, applying for colleges, and continuing her leadership development.

Michael Fu, a junior at in Fulton County, co-founded Scholarly Chess in 2018. Michael learned to play chess during after school programs in elementary school, winning numerous awards and learning invaluable skills along the way. Scholarly Chess, a nonprofit initiative with a mission to spread the joy and experiences gained from the game of chess to young children and teenagers. Since 2018, Scholarly Chess has helped kick-start two chess clubs at local high schools, raised over $500 through its inaugural “Chess For Cause” Tournament with over 20 competitors, and partnered with a local library over the summer to host a week-long chess camp. Michael is also the Vice President of the Student Table Activists Foundation (STTAF), a multi-chapter high school organization aiming to remove the cultural and financial barriers that can keep players from competitive table tennis. Through Michael’s leadership, STTAF’s charity tournament, Pong4Change, has raised over $5000 to purchase tables and paddles for economically disadvantaged players, and provide personal training. In addition, Michael created VEMS, a mobile application used for tracking volunteer hours. Michael is currently working to coordinate and organize weekly teaching sessions and expand the operations of Scholarly Chess. In the future, Michael hopes to continue impacting his community and strives to always help others.

Learn more about Scholarly Chess at https://www.scholarlychess.org/

Kiran Gadde, a junior at the Westminster Schools in Fulton County, founded Keep the Ball Rolling (KBR), a program that recycles retired athletic equipment and gear. At the beginning of his sophomore year in 2018, Kiran learned that his school would be switching their athletic supplier to Adidas, and consequently would have to discontinue use of their current Nike sports equipment. Kiran came up with the idea to begin a sports equipment recycling program, called Keep the Ball Rolling, which would organize sports equipment drives and donate gently used athletic gear to organizations and communities in need. Kiran has since collected over 300 pieces of individual equipment, donated to organizations such as Agape Youth & Family Center and Boys & Girls Clubs, as well as the previous uniforms for the entire football and programs. He donated the uniforms to re:loom, an organization that employs and empowers homeless and low-income individuals through the craft of textile weaving, to whom he was introduced at 21CL’s summer institute in 2019. He is even working on a project with re:loom for the merchandise created from the recycled uniforms to be sold at his school. When Kiran is not working on outreach for KBR, he loves to organize blood drives with his twin brother Teja in association with the American Red Cross, an organization that saved the life of a family member when an emergency blood transfusion was needed. After hosting three blood drives, the two brothers have collected over 72 pints of blood - equivalent to saving over 216 lives. Kiran says experience with 21st Century leaders opened his eyes to efficient and beneficial leadership, and he hopes to leverage the network he has been invited into to further his projects in the Atlanta community.

Keith Harris, a senior at Westlake High School in Fulton County, is a history-making public speaker. As part of the nationally known Harvard Debate Council Diversity Project, Keith and his debate partner were the first African Americans to go undefeated and win the Harvard Summer Residency International Tournament in Harvard history. After attending one of 21CL’s summer institutes Keith was inspired to use his platform and skills from his time at both 21CL and Harvard Debate Council to reach back into his community and start a public speaking workshop in partnership with Youth Challenge Incorporated. He believes that in every profession, the need to communicate your thoughts concisely is a must. Because of this, he launched this program in September 2019 in order to give students access to this invaluable communication skill. Keith has impacted over 40 youth who participated in his first workshop series, which he led every other Saturday from September through December. He is recruiting a younger public speaker to succeed him as leader of this workshop so it may continue in the local community after he graduates. In the fall, Keith plans to attend college in the fall and major in Business Management and eventually become an Entertainment Lawyer.

Freddie “DJ” Haythorne, a senior at Clinch County High School in Clinch County, is a dedicated community volunteer and host of the podcast “Wake Up America.” In a city of just 2,400 residents, Freddie’s 200 hours of community service to those in need have impacted his community greatly. In fact, his impact has been so large that it earned him the City of Homerville Gold Star Award for his service. Freddie has always possessed leadership qualities and potential inside of him, however, he says once he attended 21st Century Leaders’ summer institute, EarthCare, he finally had the confidence to act on it. In 2018, Freddie also started a podcast with a friend from his original hometown, Los Angeles, called “Wake Up America.” The podcast serves as a platform for discussion of racial inequality, providing knowledge and awareness to empower his generation to take peaceful action toward radical change. His personal experience and anecdotes from his family motivates him to promote activism and awareness. Freddie is an active member of Clinch County High School Chapter of the National Beta Club. He plans to attend or Georgia State University in the fall.

Kelsey Henderson, a senior at Westlake High School in Fulton County, is the co-founder of The Brainy Bunch, a mental health support program for her school. Founded in 2019 by Kelsey and two of her peers, Julia Seay and India Rice, The Brainy Bunch aims to implement healthy and positive mental health initiatives into the ordinary school day. Kelsey co-founded this club after witnessing several of her friends and family battle with mental health issues like anxiety, depression, and ultimately suicide. This program has already served over 100 Westlake students through monthly events focused on mental health and the involvement of over 50 volunteers. Within its first active year, The Brainy Bunch created a dedicated break room for the student body, expanded the number of counselor services on campus including a Mental Health Hotline, and served the student body with initiatives such as School Cheat Day in which they send treats and positive compliments to their peers. Through The Brainy Bunch and her role as Student Body President, Kelsey expresses passion for mental healthcare and to bridge the gap between administration and the student body. Outside of school, Kelsey is involved in multiple leadership programs in addition to 21st Century Leaders like the Fulton County Youth Commission and the Re: Imagine ATL Teen Advisory Board and volunteers with her Girl Scout troop, National Honor Society, and Beta Club. In the future, Kelsey wants to continue to create opportunities and uplift others by expanding The Brainy Bunch into more schools and through her passion for television and film production. She wants to continue to make society and the media more inclusive, spread awareness and better our society by aiding in a mentally healthy future. She plans to attend Howard University in the fall to study Film and Television Production and Strategic Communications.

Maahi Jain, a senior at Milton High School in Fulton County, is the founder of the Young Leaders of Healthcare at Milton High School and researcher on therapeutic technology for patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Maahi created the Young Leaders of Healthcare Club in 2018 to help educate her peers about healthcare through connecting them to a variety of professionals in the medical field. The club meets twice a month at the Milton Public Library - allowing students of all ages and from any school to attend - and has officers from three different high schools. Each meeting allows 10-25 students to learn from a guest speaker in careers like cardiology, dentistry, and public health. Maahi has also been working with a laboratory at Columbia University to conduct a research study on the uses of 3D printing technology to facilitate reminiscence therapy for seniors with Alzheimer’s disease. Maahi’s passion to research Alzheimer’s disease is personal, after seeing family members suffering from severe forms of the disease and after volunteering for over four years at the Arbor Terrace Assisted Living and Senior Care in the dementia facility. She conducted her research with nine residents of Arbor Terrace, working with them for a period of 2 months before entering the analysis phase. Her goal for her project is to research a technological solution to therapy options in Alzheimer’s disease for future use in senior facilities. She has also volunteered and interned at various medical facilities locally and in India. Maahi is also the co-creator of a tutoring company called TutorShine, is a lifelong pianist, a Bollywood dancer, and a 21st Century Leaders Youth Ambassador. In the future, Maahi hopes to go to medical school to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor and expanding her research on the human brain.

Shalin Jain, a senior at Duluth High School in Gwinnett County, launched VietSkype in 2018, an online platform to teach English to disadvantaged high school students in Vietnam. Being a second-generation immigrant and going to school surrounded by other first and second-generation immigrants, Shalin says the language barrier is a community struggle in his community. He leveraged high school volunteerism to begin VietSkype in his school, pairing English-speaking peers with disadvantaged high school students in Vietnam who were looking to overcome the language barrier. Thanks to having volunteers and a video chat system, Shalin has tutored over 70 rural Vietnamese students for free, allowing them to improve their English with the hopes of studying abroad. While overcoming the language barrier, tutors and students were able to find common ground across opposite hemispheres. Shalin hopes to expand the impact of the project to other parts of the world, applying the same model to other underserved areas wishing to have access to English tutoring. Aside from operating VietSkype, Shalin is an officer of National Honor Society, on the board for Duluth International Night, the Lead Engineer of the robotics team, and the President of Science Olympiad. Outside of school, Shalin is a part of a K-Pop dance group and helps teach classes at the Francis Fong Martial Arts Academy.

Nitya Jella, a senior at the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology in Gwinnett County, is an advocate of the visually impaired and co-founder of the Buddy Runners, an organization that pairs guide runners with blind athletes to help them run races. After two years of volunteering with the blind community, she noticed the lack of adapted sports and opportunities for the visually impaired to get involved in athletics. She wanted them to be able to experience the sport of running, so she created this organization in 2017. Personally, Nitya has run six 5K races as a guide for blind runners. In addition to “running” her organization, Nitya is an active volunteer in Atlanta's blind community; she has spent over 1,000 hours working with this community and has impacted over 200 blind children. She volunteers at the Center for the Visually Impaired and at the National Federation for the Blind summer camps to help visually impaired children live independently. For seven summers she has worked with Camp Abilities, another organization that provides a stay-away summer camp for kids to experience other adapted sports. She is also an audiobook reader for the Georgia Radio Reading Services, a station under Georgia Public Broadcasting. Nitya recently won the Posse Scholarship, a full-tuition scholarship that is based on leadership and service, and she will be attending Texas A&M University in the fall. Nitya is a 21CL Youth Ambassador and is very passionate about service and, in the future, would like to become a music therapist.

Jaden General Joiner, a junior at KIPP Atlanta Collegiate High School in Fulton County, is the founder of J-Star Sparks Change, an anti-bullying campaign developed to inspire young adults to be positive influences amongst their peers. Jaden founded this movement in 2015 as a 6th-grade student due to his experiences growing up with a speech impediment. This first-hand experience gave Jaden the confidence to take the initiative in his school and community to be the change he wanted to see. J-Star Sparks Change has served over 100 students across Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi and has allowed Jaden to speak at the 2017 Hope Global Forum (HGF), host the 2018 HGF, and speak at the 2016 Steve Harvey Boys Mentoring Camp. His campaign has raised over $5,000 in funding from corporations and has generated $3,000 in revenue from sales of anti-bullying campaign products. Jaden’s leadership initiatives were featured on WCEG talk Radio and also sparked inspiration amongst his peers. Jaden is also a GA state representative for the Be Strong Society, a non-profit organization empowering youth to prevent bullying. He volunteers his summers with KiK Start, a program that provides mentoring and technical assistance in his community. Jaden is passionate about being an inspiration to others and learning about African American History and entrepreneurship. Jaden aspires to attend a 4-year college and explore the fields of Marketing and Business Management.

Conner Kanaly, a junior at The in Fulton County, is the co-founder of the CPK Scholarship. Through money raised from year-round jobs and fundraising efforts, Conner, along with his sister, created the CPK Scholarship to help families in need defray the costs of books and course materials for college-bound students. The CPK Scholarship has awarded $500 to families being served by Agape, an Atlanta-based non-profit. Conner first became involved with Agape when he was in grade school — regularly volunteering his time both during the school year and over summer break he witnessed the needs first hand. His goal for the scholarship is not only to increase the number of recipients each year, but also to increase the dollar amount awarded, with the overarching goal of helping talented, less- fortunate candidates become successful leaders. Outside of his involvement with Agape, Conner continues to work three year-round jobs to keep the scholarship funded. Conner is a member of the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Club, a leader of a Bible Study Program for middle- and lower-school students, and a co-founder and co-president of the High School Club at Lovett, an outlet for students to relieve stress and enjoy their afternoons during a rigorous academic day. Conner views all of these activities as a means of promoting (and funding) student leadership for underprivileged children in and out of the Atlanta community – this is his unifying goal.

Visit his scholarship application and the 2019 winner at: cpkscholarship.weebly.com

Madison Kenney, a junior at Georgia Connections Academy in Gwinnett County, is the founder of the RoboChicks Robotics Team and STEAM advocate for girls. At the age of nine, Madison founded the RoboChicks Robotics Team, after discovering that girls were underrepresented at competitions and wanted to change that statistic. At the age of thirteen, Madison began writing grants to cover the cost to coach younger girls in underserved areas, securing over $4,000. Madison has coached 195 girls and counting through RoboChicks. She has now gone onto starting RoboChicks 2G (Second Generation), a competitive robotics team for elementary and middle school-aged girls at the Andrew and Walter Young Family YMCA. Madison also started a Girls Who Code Club at her online school signing up 135 new members with hopes of expanding the program nationally on the Connection Academy online platform. She averages over 100 Outreach hours each school year by exhibiting at STEM Expos, holding STEM training and speaking engagements. She has competed in the FIRST Lego League, FIRST Tech Challenge and Seaperch Underwater Robotics and has many awards both locally and nationally Madison has been named an "Everyday Young Hero'" by Youth Services America for all of her efforts to bring more girls into STEAM and was nominated as “WIT Girl of the Year Finalist.” Madison is a Dual Enrolled student at Kennesaw State University and aspires to become a Mechatronics Engineer.

Check out RoboChicks Robotics on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Jacob Lee, a junior at the Kennesaw Mountain High School Academy of Mathematics, Science and Technology in Cobb County, is the founder and President of Tech Gap Reboot, a 501(c)(3) providing classroom-based technology solutions to close the education gap both locally and abroad. Using technology-based learning systems, Jacob has raised $32,000 and works with 40 volunteers to help close the gap for hundreds of kids internationally by bringing access to Khan Academy in Lima, Peru. They have provided hundreds of textbooks, maps, and other educational resources to places of learning in need, even if these places lack consistent access to power or the internet. This idea came to Jacob after several trips to South America and Africa when he noticed that many of the educational resources he had access to were not available for many other kids globally. Jacob understood the lack of resources created an unfair playing field, damaging kids’ ability to escape poverty from their earliest years of learning. He’s already working towards serving kids in Cusco starting May 2020. In addition to working in Peru, Jacob has also started a local tutoring program in Atlanta that accommodates homeless kids who are taught by retired teachers and high school student volunteers. Through these programs, many kids have already jumped several reading grade levels within the first year. Jacob serves as the junior class treasurer in his school’s student government, is the varsity defense captain on KMHS’ team, a Life Scout, an intern for the Kennesaw Business Association, and a state finalist for the 2020 Governor’s Honors Program. In the future, Jacob plans to attend college studying towards a Physics degree or an Aerospace Engineering degree.

Learn more about Tech Gap Reboot at: https://techgapreboot.org/

Cody Nelson, a junior at St. Pius X Catholic High School in DeKalb County, founded Reaction VR Sports, Inc, a company that provides lacrosse goalies with a virtual reality training environment, called Virtual Goalie. Cody developed Virtual Goalie when he was switching his position on his lacrosse team from an attackman to a goalie. Seeking the resources to develop the skills and train for this position, he invented a way to practice his new lacrosse goalie position using his virtual reality headset in a fully immersive field of play. After realizing that it made him a more effective player, he released the virtual training program to the public as a subscription service. Since its inception in 2017, Cody has built a user base of several hundred subscribers, including schools, universities, lacrosse programs, camps, and individual players. Seeing a 300% growth over last fiscal year, he is developing this same VR service for baseball and other sports. Currently, Cody is exploring a philanthropic opportunity to work with an organization that helps athletes with disabilities. He hopes to rework the VR application so that disabled athletes can benefit from an immersive virtual training environment. In 2018, Cody and his company participated at LaxCon, the national lacrosse convention, drawing crowds and new subscribers. Cody is also involved in philanthropic work at Books for Africa, the Zaban Couples Shelter in Midtown, and Creating Connected Communities. Cody wants to study computer science and artificial intelligence to help change the world for the better by creating solutions that change and impact lives in a positive way.

Learn more at www.reactionvrsports.com and by following @VirtualGoalie on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Sarah Oburu, a junior at Etowah High School in Cherokee County, is co-founder and Board member of the National Dreamers Association (NDA), a network of high school chapters that empowers teens to chase their dreams and defy the impossible. It’s the largest student-run motivational club in the country. After attending the Disney Dreamers Academy at Walt Disney World, Florida in March 2018, Sarah and a few other Dreamers joined forces to create the student-led association as a way to share some of the life-changing lessons they gained, and ultimately empower other high school students to not sit on the sidelines but to chase their dreams. Within a year, National Dreamers Association established three chapters in Florida and in September 2019 made a “Defy Impossible” presentation to 4,700 high school students in Weston, Florida. Sarah and her team are looking to continue building out more chapters this year, primarily in the state of Georgia and California. In fact, they arranged a meeting with Walt Disney Company executives to collaborate and pitch ideas for the program’s expansion. Sarah has served in various roles since the association’s inception, starting out as Creative Development Department Head, where she worked with a team to create their inaugural curriculum, organize workshops and events, and run their social media campaigns to continue building out the National Dreamers Association brand. Sarah also serves in various leadership roles at her school, including as the Junior Class Vice President, Key Club webmaster, NEHS Junior representative and the junior student director of her high school tutoring center, the East Wing. She volunteers annually to mentor and teach video production to young girls attending a local camp and serves as a Sunday school teacher bi-weekly at her church.

To learn more about National Dreamers Association follow them online at www.nationaldreamers.org and on Instagram.

Aakash Pothu, a senior at South Forsyth High School in Forsyth County, is the founder of CardioSmart, a cardiac death predictor for patients who are susceptible to chronic cardiac diseases. CardioSmart incorporates an intuitive risk algorithm by utilizing the Heart Rate Variability (HRV) scans of patients. The idea behind this app came from the personal endeavors his family went through with cardiovascular diseases.The app feeds in thousands of different heart rate variability scans and uses machine learning to match certain arrhythmias and heart defeats to diagnose a patient, usable for prevention, monitoring, and even for insurance purposes. To explore his passion for life-saving technology, Aakash assisted Dr. Michael Borich at the Neural Plasticity Research Lab at the Department of Rehabilitation at the Emory School of Medicine. In this lab, he helped conduct research on Sensorimotor Deprivation and plasticity of the human hand motor cortex. Aakash also established various connections through the 21st Century Leaders to help his app and business, one of which was an internship with Hire Dynamics. Currently, Aakash is working on releasing the application to the public. Going ahead, Aakash is adamant about revolutionizing his dream of helping lives around the world while simultaneously creating a legacy that will impact generations to come.

Camisha Smith, a senior at Henry W. Grady High School in Fulton County, is the founder of All Mixed Up Project and business entrepreneur. The All Mixed Up Project has started as a15 member group that advocates for people of multiracial backgrounds and spreads awareness. Camisha envisioned this project based on her own experiences as a biracial teen in Atlanta and wanted to teach people how to inquire about other people’s backgrounds in a respectful way. Started in 2018, the organization has impacted hundreds of people worldwide, educating people at community events, through their social media platforms, and the documentary that was directed and produced by Camisha. The documentary profiles various multiracial teens who she interviewed to share their stories and experiences and has been shown at several screenings across the city with the All Mixed Up group hosting panel discussions to spark a conversation about race. Additionally, she started her own business two years ago selling thrifted clothes on an Instagram page, with a growing following of over 5,000 people. She has sold over 600 items and plans to continue this into her college career. Camisha is also an active member of the National Honor Society, National Beta Club, and 21st Century Leaders Club at her school. Her future plans include majoring in public relations or marketing, expanding her business, and continuing to spread awareness on campus and the world around her.

On Instagram, visit @allmixedupproject and click the link in the bio to view her film, and support her online shop @shopcamishascloset.

Ciera Walker, a senior at Hardaway High School in Muscogee County, is the founder of Young Black Writers, an organization out of Wesley Heights Elementary School in Columbus, Georgia. Young Black Writers is a program designed to promote literacy, journalism, and public speaking in elementary students, specifically 3rd - 5th graders. Ciera was motivated and inspired to create Young Black Writers during the 2019-2020 school year after observing a deficit of seniors in her high school community being eligible for graduation. Coming from a high school with 100% economically disadvantaged student population, the majority of these students had very low literacy scores and were not proficient writers. Ciera also began to notice a decline in interest among students of all ages in terms of reading and writing in general. Every Monday, Ciera works with 10-15 elementary students teaching the fundamentals of English in a unique way. Ciera has dedicated over 80 hours to establishing and running Young Black Writers, and has seen 75% of her students feel more confident in their writing abilities, public speaking skills and feel more prepared to move on to their next grade level. Aside from working this program, Ciera also serves as a 21st Century Youth Ambassador, President of the National English Honor Society at her school, and is a Girl Scout. She volunteers regularly with her local United Way Youth Council and participated in iLead, a leadership program where she contributed to the service project of revamping Truth Springs Academy, a low income elementary school. After graduation, Ciera intends to carry her passion for journalism into college where she plans to major in Broadcast Journalism. She wants to use her voice to uplift and encourage those in this country who feel unheard and underrepresented.

Alvin Wright, a junior at Clarkston High School in DeKalb County, is committed to serving the immigrant population in his community. An immigrant himself, Alvin moved to the United States from Liberia, Africa in 2018. Not long after Alvin moved to the U.S. (and to Clarkston, GA, the “most diverse square mile in America”), since he understood what it feels like to need help, he started to dedicate his time and pay it forward. Through his community work, Alvin has impacted over 15 students through the program, “Transforming Lives, One Child At a Time,” which counsels and supports children who have lost their homes and are living in hotels, and he is a peer tutor for ESL students and other immigrant teenagers as they prepare to take the SAT with Re'Generation Movement's SAT and leadership classes. Alvin spends hundreds of hours volunteering with clean-up campaigns, the food pantry at his school that provides boxed meals to over 100 families once a month, and other outreach and service projects. Through sharing his experience and passion, Alvin has created a more inclusive community, celebrating differences and raising awareness of the diaspora experience. He dreams of becoming a diplomat or an international lawyer to fight for the causes of those who are victims of the current problems in the world or who are unable to defend themselves.