Events

  • Dejah Powell
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    Dejah Powell

    Dejah Powell is doing everything she can to green up the South Side of Chicago. As a kid, Dejah didn’t know the meaning of “environmental justice.” So, now, with her nonprofit organization Get Them to the Green, she’s helping young people build community gardens and educating them on the importance of the environment. CATEGORY: Green…

  • Haile Thomas
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    Haile Thomas

    There aren’t many kids who can say they’ve met first lady Michelle Obama once—let alone multiple times. For teen chef Haile Thomas, meeting Obama has only empowered her quest to inspire kids to live healthy lifestyles. “Getting to interact with her several times over the years sometimes still feels unreal, and I am eternally grateful…

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    Zendaya

    Whether singing, acting or clapping back on Twitter, Zendaya always finds a way to use her voice for good. “I have a billion dreams, and I want to use my platform to help people,” she told Vanity Fair. “I’ve been given this power and I have to start conversations that are bigger than myself.” CATEGORY:…

  • Isaiah Cooper 
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    Isaiah Cooper 

    Isaiah Cooper is already aiming to fly to higher heights. In 2016, at 16 years old, he made headlines when he became one of the youngest black pilots to fly around the United States. The next mission? To make the Guinness World Records and become the youngest person to take a solo flight around the…

  • Grace Dolan-Sandrino
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    Grace Dolan-Sandrino

    At 16, Grace Dolan-Sandrino is already leading the charge among young people in resisting Donald Trump’s agenda. In November, she and thousands of other students in Washington, D.C., walked out of their classrooms to protest the then-president elect. “We are trying to get our voices heard,” she said. “We were not able to vote. We…

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    Clifton Kinnie

    Clifton Kinnie wasn’t planning to be an activist. It wasn’t until he saw a picture of slain teen Michael Brown on his Twitter timeline that he decided he had to make a change in his St. Louis community—and beyond. “It was a time in which it truly radicalized me in a way in which I…

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    Simone Manuel

    Call her “Swimone,” if you’d like. At 20 years old, Simone Manuel became the first black woman to win Olympic gold in an individual swimming event at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics, setting an Olympic record. She also won a gold medal in the 4-x-100 meter medley and silver medals in the 50-meter…

  • A’Dorian Murray-Thomas
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    A’Dorian Murray-Thomas

    A’Dorian Murray-Thomas has used her own experience with tragedy to help other young girls triumph over hard times. When she was 7 years old, her father was killed in a robbery in her hometown of Newark, N.J. Because she had a community of people around her pushing her to be her best self despite her…

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    Chris Suggs 

    Chris Suggs set himself on a path to change the world very early. When he was 14, his hometown, Kinston, N.C., experienced a spate of gun violence—and Chris quickly grew tired of hearing about young people getting caught in the crossfire. So, in 2014, he founded Kinston Teens to amplify voices of young people so…

  • Jonathan Wynn-Strachan
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    Jonathan Wynn-Strachan

    Art saved Jonathan Wynn-Strachan’s life. In 2012, when he was a sophomore in high school, he and his family were living out of a one-bedroom motel room. He’d lost hope that his family’s situation would improve. But after hearing Nat King Cole’s “Smile” on the radio one day, Jonathan knew he had to stop focusing…