2023 MyImpact Challenge Virtual Fair

0:00 foreign welcome to the 2023 my impact challenge virtual Fair my name is Rachel Davison Humphreys and I’m the senior director of Civic learning initiatives today we are celebrating our winners from the Bill of Rights Institute my impact challenge 2023 Civic engagement contest this contest brings students together from across America in the spirit of community service and principled constitutional engagement we’ve received entries from all over the country from public private and homeschool students and we’ve seen so many different projects this year focusing on everything from poverty to mental health Sports the Arts and so much more to see which projects Rose to the top but to kick it off I’d first like to

0:47 offer a warm welcome to the president of the Bill of Rights Institute Dr David Baum [Music] thank you Rachel bidding that we’re celebrating the achievements of young people in the Bill of Rights institute’s my impact challenge in late June we’re in between Juneteenth and July 4th book ends of a time for reflection and celebration in our nation reflection and remembrance of the cost of enslavement for Americans of African descent and celebration of what Frederick Douglass called the saving principles of equality and Liberty there’s a relationship between Juneteenth and July 4th it ties into the achievements of these young people you’ll be hearing from today the Bill of

1:33 Rights Institute teaches Civics and these young people are building Civil Society Civics is sound history the study of government and politics and reflection and practice of good character of Civic virtues done well Civics helps us chart our future it does so based on the formal constitutional structure that was set up in our founding and also in our informal Constitution or the way we are as a people the informal Constitution we might think of as our character our virtues what makes us American my impact challenge is about our formal Constitution together with our informal Constitution it’s a science fair for civics and it

2:20 invites 13 to 18 year old Americans to identify a challenge in their communities and address those challenges done well this requires an understanding of constitutional government entrepreneurship and charity done well it also invites young people to solve problems by building Civil Society in just a few minutes you’ll hear from the my impact challenge winners they all will talk about the projects which are real not hypothetical they’ll tell you about what worked and what didn’t what they learned and how they learned it how they’re applying founding principles in Civic virtues in redressing some of the biggest challenges we have in our nation what I love most about my impact challenge is that all the projects

3:06 originate and are tied to local community issues the young people are dealing with concrete problems concrete problems it turns out are tied to abstract principles that’s what each of these winners have discovered each in their own way this is why it’s fitting that our celebration today is just before independence day you know when in 1863 Abraham Lincoln began his address at Gettysburg Battlefield with the phrase four score and seven years ago he reminded his fellow citizens that their cause in the Civil War was also the cause of 1776. in the year of America’s birth Lincoln stated quote our fathers brought forth

3:52 on this continent a new nation conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal end quote by recalling the year 1776 in which America declared its independence from Great Britain Lincoln reminds us that the constitution of 1789 stands on the principles of our declaration America’s Bedrock principles are equality and Liberty that’s what Frederick Douglass meant in 1852 when in his speech what to the slave is the Fourth of July he talked about the saving principles as Lincoln and Frederick Douglass knew the American understanding of equality and Liberty was revolutionary the

4:38 Declaration affirms the Revolutionary idea that all human beings are created equal in their possession of certain unalienable rights these rights include life liberty and the pursuit of happiness because the government does not give these rights to human beings the Declaration argues no government can take them away it’s striking how many of the my impact challenge winners wrote about equality and natural rights also Liberty in their essays that’s because in America the solutions to our nation’s many challenges are right in front of us in our principles these principles can save us but only if we act on them these young people are doing that and

5:23 they’re doing it well let’s hear now from them about their projects back to you Rachel thank you Dr Bob now is the time you’ve been waiting for it’s time to review our teacher winners and our six honorable mentions to start our teacher winners have made their own contributions to service through their supportive engagement with their students and our honorable mention projects have shown us how many novel ideas American students are implementing to serve their communities thank you to all of our teachers and the honorable mentions thank you [Music]

6:14 [Music] [Music] hi everyone my name is Jose Patel and I’m a senior from Oxford Academy High School located in Orange County California I’m the founder of each one th1 club which is an organization that helps domestic and international Families Our mission is to provide foreign orphan children with the financial means to access the basic necessities for Health Medical housing education nourishment and supplemental income the developing or stricken countries facilitated through donations and fundraising initiatives worldwide through local efforts by our members

7:00 worldwide eoto seeks to confront these specific barriers our Endeavor is to overcome these barriers which can be made possible through donations and fundraising initiatives where each dollar raised contributes to many equal difference in the life of a future child we believe that by providing these basic necessities it teaches children to dream big and empowers them to pursue these streams an investment in the basic necessities is not just an investment in children but in the prosperity and well-being of the community’s long term [Music] foreign there’s a serious issue when it comes to lack of financial knowledge in fact according to an finra study 53 percent of Americans are not financially literate whoa that’s a staggering statistic it has far-reaching consequences and can

7:46 even lead to Vicious Cycles of poverty even with this data financial literacy is often overlooked and even the resources that are available to teachers are often overpriced and hard to find the system is clearly broken in order to battle these challenges we encourage our students to take the leap into financial literacy engaging students about Finance when they’re young is necessary for a strong foundation and a financially literate future through our in-person boot camp we have taught engaging lessons using our handcrafted materials we have also created our website to make our resources accessible to all in just one click seeing the worldwide impact of our project through our online seminar as well as our website has enabled us to see the importance of the civic virtue equality in financial education

8:32 [Music] thank you hi I’m Katie meggers and welcome to mindful moves my fun engaging initiative to teach underserved kids the six pillars of healthy habits to improve their physical and mental Wellness we have partnered partnered with the boys and girls club and local elementary schools and I have already taught the nutrition portion of the curriculum to over 60 students here students are making their own food pyramids now we’re planning a much larger scale summer camp with the boys and girls club and we’re working with a Newport Mesa Unified School District curriculum and development team to promote mindful moves as an enrichment resource for teachers but we’re not stopping there we have published the mindful moves curriculum on Amazon and I’m in the

9:17 process of creating an app and website to expand access to our content together we can provide kids with the knowledge and skills they need to lead healthier more balanced lives join us in this movement towards wellness and lessons for the Next Generation to make mindful moves [Music] right I’m Becky Burke and I’m him we saw indeed in our community to teach underserved youth about the justice system so we created kids for example to inspire children to become a lawyers who are making Advocate Justice for their own Community we started this process because we were passionate about legal studies and we wanted to make kids they’re just as excited about law as we are we started to compile information

10:04 from different resources such as the American Bar Association and teacher websites for activities in our workbook [Music] we researched different venues where we could host around 15 kids we contacted spin to host our very first mock trial Workshop during the camp it was evident that their confidence improved and that they were more comfortable advocating for themselves the camp went better than we could have ever imagined and we can’t wait to do another one soon [Music] hi I’m Ella and welcome to my non-profit startup Savvy a startup incubator for kids by kids after launching a

10:50 sustainable pet clothing business Lulu and Bella I knew I wanted to help other kids turn their passions into projects too so I developed and published a kids workbook to lead them through every step of building a business from ideation of the product or service to marketing budgeting sales and more then I partnered with breakthrough San Juan the boys and girls club and the YMCA to host Hands-On entrepreneurship workshops where we made everything from Friendship Bracelets to Pom-Pom keychains they put their business savvy skills to the test as they practice pitching their ideas and selling their products with support from Google I’m excited to scale startup Savvy this summer and reach even more budding entrepreneurs I will also continue to collaborate with the Capistrano Unified School District to bring entrepreneurial education into Middle School classrooms this way more students learn the leadership teamwork problem-solving communication and

11:37 financial skills that come with launching any new venture [Music] hi I’m Audrey Sue I’m a junior from Salt Lake City Utah and I’m an advocate for equity in music education specifically through Title 1 strengths back in 2021 I founded Title 1 strings a 501c3 certified non-profit of high school musicians aiming to further a quality in music education in Utah I’ve LED 20 performances and established six free violin and cello programs throughout Utah LED entirely by High School musicians Title 1 strings embodies equality and justice by giving the underserved the musical opportunities they deserve we also nurture respect pushing kids to build self-esteem and also encouraging

12:23 constant collaboration with their peers for mutual respect all in all Title 1 strings pushes the founding principles and Civic virtues of our nation through string music exposure to the underserved in Utah those projects were so inspiring my name is Adam Brickley and I’m the manager of Civic engagement projects here at the Bill of Rights Institute before we move forward we want to briefly hear from our friends at the National Youth Leadership Council who have been great allies of my impact Challenge and also offer great programs for youth involved in service [Music] hello everyone my name is Amy muirs and I’m the CEO of the National Youth Leadership Council on behalf of nylc I want to offer congratulations to all the amazing young leaders of the my impact

13:10 challenge your work inspires us to push the boundaries of our own work to create a more just sustainable and peaceful world with young people their schools and communities through Service Learning nyc’s vision is that all young people have the opportunity to become civically informed and engage Global Citizens who are passionate about making a difference in the world to do that we provide young people with leadership opportunities through our National Youth advisory Council it’s a group of servant leaders who work alongside the NYC staff as trainers facilitators program developers and so much more they also develop and facilitate our annual youth Leadership Summit and present at the national service learning

13:55 conference applications for the yak are available right now so if this sounds of interest to you please check out our website at nyc.org and learn more about our youth advisory Council and all the great work that they’re doing NYC also provides leadership opportunities through our youth as Solutions program so we have teams of young people along with their adult mentors addressing issues in their Community while they receive resources materials trainings and project grants from NYC student teams have been tackling mental health safe driving education equity and so much more and we just open those applications for that program so check

14:41 it out it might be of interest to you more support to help you make the positive changes that you’re making in the world and while she also strives to lift up the voices of young people through our podcast we have the power of young people to change the world it’s a place where youth have the opportunity to share their stories how they’re affecting change in their communities the challenges they’re facing the lessons they’re learning and the passion they have to make the world a better place for us all I would love to invite each of you to check out the show if you like it share it with your friends and if you have a story to tell um on our website there’s a form you can fill out and we might just invite you to be on the show and share your own story

15:26 um we know that when we all work together Youth and adults alike we can make this world a better place so we hope that you’ll visit nylc.org to learn about all the ways that we’re supporting young people as Leaders of change and again a huge huge huge congratulations to everyone who participated in the my impact challenge you are truly leading and inspiring us all today can’t emphasize enough how thankful we are to be friends with the nylc if you’re not familiar with them make sure you go check them out as we move forward it’s now time to recognize the first of our four top prizes our third prize goes to Miana Holden from poly prep Country School in Brooklyn New York

16:14 [Music] thank you for being here today Miana we’re so happy we could have you here and congratulations on winning our third prize um you’ve done some amazing work and we were really excited to introduce you to our audience so why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself hi my name is mianna Holden I am a junior and I live in Brooklyn New York um I am the founder of spectrumize a non-profit that promotes Autism Awareness so what really inspired you to start this project and what does it do I what really inspired me is my brother you know having brother on the Spectrum who lives in my home it really opened my eyes to the struggles that like firsthand that people and families on the autism

17:00 spectrum encounter and especially after moving to Brooklyn the education system and kind of seeing my family and my brother work through that it really opened my eyes to the lack of resources available for especially children on the Spectrum which kind of aided me to create these kits um to provide to children on the autism spectrum especially those who are low income and um giving them sensory processing kits and the second part of my um organization which is the workbook portion it kind of leads to my personal experience and Me growing up with the brother on the Spectrum and realizing that a lot of the lack of Consciousness comes from a young age in social media so by implementing my curriculum into these classrooms it allows me to start

17:46 these stereotypes like to cut off these stereotypes early and to kind of make them more open-minded and inclusive for children on the Spectrum that’s really lovely and I’m so glad you’re able to help out and do this so as you’re doing this project how has that impacted your understanding of citizenship and what it means to be a good citizen I definitely think that that the research portion and really understanding the Civic virtues and that’s something that before the my impact challenge I wasn’t really cognizant of and it kind of helped me to go back and really think what I want to do with this project and to implement some of the things that I learned and being a good citizen by teaching others how to be good citizens as it relates to um caring and being inclusive to Trojan on the autism spectrum I’m so glad you’re able to use some of our my impact

18:32 materials and things like that it’s good to know that those those are actually helpful um so did you encounter any surprises working on your project like what’s a big thing you’ve learned through the project that you weren’t expecting definitely the amount of time and effort that it takes to really put a project into action I definitely feel like I underestimated the amount of time and the amount of work I would have to really put into this and the amount of people I would have to contact to reach out to these schools to put my project into place and to research the materials and to research the things that I’m putting into the kids it’s like for example the said like you have kinetic sand but you know making it out of Cheerios seeing if that’s gonna work because I know my brother he can’t eat kinetic sand but he doesn’t know the difference between kinetic sand and Cheerios so kind of just implementing

19:18 these type of ways to make a better product and I think another part that really surprised me was the amount of people that I would meet and the amount of people who have these similar um things that my family and I go through and I think it surprised me how many people actually go through this and that I’m making a difference in that type of way what advice would you say you have for other uh students who are interested in getting involved in some sort of service what would you say to them so I definitely would encourage people to really stick to something that they care for and that they have a lot of passion for and that they’re willing to do research for they’re willing to contact people about and really make it part of you who you are so anything else you’d like to say before we log off I guess I can give some advice to people who are applying to the my impact challenge for

20:03 um next year um I would really um hope that you take a lot of time into this because I feel like this challenge really helps you with your service project because as I’m filling out if as I’m doing the different um the essays and making the video it kind of helps me in a sense work backwards because you the my impact challenge gives you the kind of rubric and I feel like as I’m going to the rubric and I’m going through my service project kind of hitting those points to help you make a successful project um and it kind of helps me go backwards and make sure that I capture all these parts of my project to make it successful well thank you so much for being with us today um we’re really happy uh to have you as one of our winners and and just thank you for joining us thank you I

20:49 appreciate it we’re moving forward to our top prizes but first we want to share a brief word from Jacob Merkel at rhizome we think that rhizome’s youth fellowships are a great opportunity and would love to see my impact challenge entrance get involved with this awesome organization [Music] my name is Jacob with rhizome rhizome is a partner of the Bill of Rights Institute so I work closely with adaman and Rachel we are a student-led non-profit we launched almost two years ago with 90 co-founders from 21 different states most of our co-founders are college age students some are late High School a handful of us are our mentors who are in our mid-20s and we spent most of our first year building out a shared decision making system

21:35 that’s authentically student-led so for example next year we’re going to be collectively writing and organizing around a student Bill of Rights that’s specifically focused on mental health and we are actually working with a senior scholar from the Bill of Rights Institute to put together the plan for for drafting that together next year our Flagship program is called the Civic service Fellowship it’s for emerging leaders who are in high school it’s inclusive of anyone who wants to learn to organize and increase Civic engagement fellas basically learn the first principles of community organizing engage in reflection around who they are who they want to become and learn healthy Civic habits and time management habits so if you are someone who’s in high school and you’re interested in joining the Civic service Fellowship feel free to sign up at our website that’s

22:21 www.weerize w-e-r-h-i-z-e dot org we’re so grateful for colleagues like Jacob and to be partners with rhizome so to all of the youth watching please look into rhizomes fellowships as an opportunity it is now my pleasure to announce our second prize winner from my home state Mark leschinski a student at Bergen County Academies from Mahwah New Jersey [Music] thank you for being here Mark it’s wonderful to have you and congratulations on winning a second prize in our my impact challenge contest and you’ve done some wonderful things so we’ll just open by asking you to tell us a bit about yourself yeah thank you very

23:07 much Mr Brickley it’s an honor to receive second place that my impact challenged this year 2023. a little bit about myself my name is Mark and I founded the student World impact film festival or Swift for short and I’m a filmmaker I love making movies about social change and social progress and I think that film is a very powerful medium that we can use and harness to inspire awareness about different topics and inspire people to take action on different topics and so as a filmmaker myself for many years you know submitting to film festivals and I found that if they’re very expensive the submission fees at a lot of film festivals make a big barrier to entry for a lot of student filmmakers and so I wanted to do something about this and start my own Film Festival I’ve been able to help thousands of students in 120 countries around the world through

23:52 following the Civic project it’s been incredibly exciting to build this to work with team members and to make this a reality and make this happen for so many students and artists around the world to give them a platform for their voices that’s really wonderful to hear and so what would you say through all this project have you learned about citizenship yourself I think that being a citizen is a really powerful force and I think that as a citizen we all can can do our part to be better citizens my personal take on that is that we can make films and use our creativity and art as Citizens to inspire others and to help others Express themselves and use our art and creativity to take action on different issues many of the issues that we see nowadays I truly think that as our own individual citizens we can harness our creativity and our power to

24:39 use art as a form to educate and Inspire others and so through building this Film Festival I’ve learned a lot about my own citizenship and what it means for me to be a citizen in my case for me to be a citizen it means to to uplift and Inspire others and to provide others with a platform yeah and we’re so glad to hear that you’ve had such an impact that so many people have been able to share their stories like you said a three year Film Festival what’s one of the most surprising things that you’ve come across in your your service journey I think one of the biggest surprises was when I first was thinking of this Film Festival I didn’t initially I think like a huge I didn’t think very very big at first I was just initially very excited about making a film festival possibly like in my area on the east coast of the US and having a place where students or

25:25 my town or my district or you know from local and neighboring states could submit and have a platform for their voices and so I think that when I published my film festival online the biggest surprise was that it got Global attention very quickly and so from then I I assembled my team of students volunteers and interns and many students who are excited to be part of the festival to help judge movies and to help rate them it breaks barriers and is a new take on a film festival and what it can be by waiting all submission fees and so students were very excited at the very beginning and they submitted they resonated with the film festival’s Mission and they were excited about a program that would be free for all yeah and having to scale up so quickly what have you learned about building teams because you clearly had to do that on quite a quick time scale within a

26:12 week I received a thousand films which was an incredible number um and so from there in about three months for the first season which was held in the fall of 2022 it received about 5 400 submissions in three months and so um I definitely I mean the first thing I thought was this is very exciting uh but I can’t watch all the films myself and so I had assembled a group of volunteers about 300 students to be a part of the festival to be volunteer judges and that really taught me a lot about teamwork I think that through teamwork we can really accomplish incredible things like with this film festival for example I would not have been able to build this entire film festival would have it be as successful as it was without all the incredible and dedicated volunteers who volunteered their time to help judge

26:58 movies to help rate movies this Festival even though I I organized and I operated I I founded it and I still run it it would not be possible without the hundreds of volunteers to dedicate their time to reviewing each and every one of the film that comes in to our doors at the film festival to help it be a success what would you tell someone else another student looking to get involved in service and serving their Community what advice would you have for them I think through service we can truly help one another and help each other to uplift and Elevate each other as students but also we can help adults I think through building this Film Festival connecting it back to that I’ve been able to help a lot of students not only you know students my age but students older than me in college and even some adults who have submitted who are student filmmakers because they’re just getting started in film like

27:44 they’re a student filmmaker in that way so we do have some adults as well but I think that through service I’ve really been able to help so so many people and it’s been an incredibly exciting Journey for me and I would definitely encourage all of you listening to this and all of you students out there to commit yourself to service well thank you so much for being here with us today and good luck as you continue with your film festival and congratulations on your award in my impact challenge thank you Mark thank you very much Mr Brickley it’s an honor to receive this award at the my impact challenge the project students around the country have so the commitment they have to improving their communities I am excited to announce that our first prize winner in second place overall is Riley Brooke kamahele a homeschool

28:31 student from Mililani Hawaii [Music] we are here with our first prize winner Riley Brook kamahele from Mililani Hawaii and uh we’re just so honored to have you here with us today so why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself sure thank you so much for having me my name is Randy I’m a 15 year old born and raised here in the state of Hawaii how my project originally started is I grew up in church ministry so I always had like a heart for helping and then a little later in life I started doing pageants and I saw firsthand how organizations didn’t want you to volunteer for them because they thought they would be babysitting

29:18 um but really we just wanted to get out and help our community in ways that we could in ways that we knew um and so I started my organization to help kids do what they love and transform their passions into actions in their communities yes could you tell us a little bit about what your project does I know we don’t have a lot of time and I know you do a lot but how what is how does your project generally function so my nonprofit is called The Catalyst stuff um it’s an overarching huge umbrella organization to eight different um organizations under it under this umbrella it’s a completely used to an organizations each serve the community in different ways the Catalyst club’s mission is to create

30:04 and provide opportunities for Children and Youth to be a catalyst for change that creates a positive impact in the world so those Eight Youth and organizations all contribute to our mission all while serving the community in different ways and what would you say you’ve learned about being a citizen through your involvement with the Catalyst Club definitely age is just a number um don’t overlook our youth or you have so many great um fun ideas that they come up with and yeah I don’t think we should take their opinions for granted that’s really cool have you encountered any surprises along the way of things that have surprised you there are surprises here in here and come with running the non-profit that I wouldn’t respect but as far as just being a Community member

30:52 I don’t think there have been any huge crazy surprises that we’ve had to come up with what sort of advice would you offer for anyone who uh another young person who’s looking to get involved in their Community um my saying is always do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life so find out what you enjoy doing if you like working with animals if you love the ocean find out what you love to do and then start getting involved from there it’s very cool and have you learned a lot about building a team I know you’ve got a lot of people that work with you for sure I have a great leader leader to me with everything every crazy band of ideas that I have um but surround yourself with positive people um I like to iron sharpension Iowa to say yeah and do you have any other

31:38 thoughts that you’d like to leave us with on citizenship on being involved in your community or or things you’d like to say to our audience not necessarily thank you so much for award is really going to help um yeah thank you Riley thank you so much for being here today it was wonderful having you and good luck on your future efforts thank you so much the my impact challenge is only in its second year of the national contest and before we go we wanted to hear from last year’s winner Hamid torabzada was the inaugural winner of the my impact Challenge and we’ve been so honored to have him represent this contest and what it stand for we wanted to make sure that we gave him the opportunity to pass the torch personally to this year’s winner

32:25 [Music] hey Bill of Rights my impact challenge 2023 winners uh congratulations my name is Hamid tarabs today and I was the inaugural my impact challenge Grand Prize winner this past year in 2022 I wanted to film this video to send over a super hearty congratulations and I want to thank you for all the outstanding work you’ve put into your projects and for sharing um your projects and how you’re being civically engaged not only with the Bill of Rights Institute but with all the amazing communities that um you know have followed your work have been involved with your work and now maybe learning about your work because

33:12 of your recognition um with the my impact challenge um so I know the time you put into writing about your project whether that’s through um understanding the Civic virtues or founding principles that apply to your project or just trying to find you know a concise and unique way to articulate um kind of the impact and all that you’ve done in your project um know that your work has not gone unrecognized and that um whether you’re you know pursuing kind of projects related to the Arts or or educating youth on cross-cultural empathy like this year’s Grand Prize winner um or you’re super involved with sciences and technology or um with public health efforts or

34:00 um any other sort of uh industry or sector know that kind of all these efforts and and on the unique variety of projects that the my impact challenge recognizes that’s what makes um our country great what makes America special and what makes um uh our community is unique really um in in this country and so um hold on to all the energy and excitement that I know you’re receiving from from winning uh your award in this in this year’s Challenge and um if you’re anything like me um enjoy the moment embrace it um spend it with your mentors your friends your colleagues your peers

34:45 um Whoever has helped you and supported you in this journey since um it certainly has not been a uh you know single person effort and so uh congratulations again um wish you all the best with the future of your projects and um hope to see all that you continue to accomplish to our fine all the entries we received this one rose to the absolute top it is my honor to introduce our grand prize winner Carolyn GAO from West Albany High School in Albany Oregon [Music]

35:32 thank you for joining us Caroline and congratulations on winning the grand prize in our my impact challenge we are so excited to have you here and we were really excited by your entry and what you’re doing so would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself and what your project was of course thank you so much for this opportunity to speak with you today my name is Caroline I use she her pronouns and I am from Oregon my project was the world in us which is a non-profit seeking to eliminate cultural ignorance and cultivate global citizenship through youth for youth education and I actually started the initiative back in 2020 and since then we’ve run a variety of cultural education camps um virtual exchange programs media initiatives and other programs that seek

36:19 to spark Intercultural dialogue amongst young people and we’ve been able to serve since we began around 700 youth across 26 countries and the Wilderness is um a huge passion of mine and it’s really an honor to get this chance to to share more about no we really were impressed by it and so what would you say inspired you to start your work for me uh they’re like two like main threads of inspiration I would say one is my experience growing up here in Albany Oregon is a fairly small town and not very diverse and when I was growing up as a Chinese American oftentimes I would just have comments that were kind of ignorant or hurtful not necessarily

37:06 intentionally but just out of lack of education for my peers about my culture about my food about how I looked things like that and especially as a kid that really harmed I think my sense of self-worth and belonging in a way that I don’t think any kids have to go through I think every person deserves to just feel welcome and understood in whatever environment they’re in regardless of where they come from of what their Heritage is and at the same time I think there’s so much Beauty to be found through cultural dialogue and cultural understanding um especially as I got older and got the chance to meet other young people from a variety of different cultural backgrounds through virtual exchange programs and similar experiences I started to realize what a privilege it was that I got to be part of Chinese and

37:52 American culture that I’ve gotten the chance to go abroad to learn different languages and to really deeply engage with the full Beauty and diversity of cultures that exist in our world and especially again in some smaller towns and towns like mine opportunities for that kind of cultural exchange and dialogue isn’t always present for everyone especially when people are younger I wanted to prevent future Generations from facing the cultural ignorance I did and also give everyone the same opportunities that I’ve had to explore Global cultures and enrich their own life and world view through that cultural engagement that’s really amazing so what would you say that you’ve learned about citizenship through this process I honest see I’ve learned so much from it I think through

38:37 the Wilderness though for one I’ve I’ve realized how much progress my own Community is making and how many people in this community are really fighting for a more inclusive future and I think in one way that’s helped me see that I belong in this community but also um through working to change my community and working to create the kinds of um the kind of future that I want for my community I realize I think that citizenship isn’t really about even like the country that you’re from or that you were born in but about how you contribute to the communities around you and the communities that you’re a part of and I think I’ve personally just felt much more engaged and much more close with my community as

39:23 a citizen of my community as citizen of the US and also just as a global citizen in this world that is so interconnected today I feel a lot more connected to the communities that I would consider myself a citizen of I think with this um well with this challenge particularly and the way it framed my reflection on my work with the Wilderness I think it honestly gave me a lot more appreciation for just how much like founding principles and Civic virtues of the US are really ingrained in my own values and beliefs and all the different cultural interactions I’ve gotten to have through the world in us with young people from other countries it’s also I think given me a greater sense of like pride and ownership in my own American

40:08 citizenship and um yeah I think it’s it’s helped me realize that a lot of kind of foundational American ideals are also kind of my own foundational ideals and that’s been a really cool realization has anything really surprised you as you’ve done your work like what’s been one of the biggest shockers one is honestly with our education system uh we so we do the Wilderness runs a virtual exchange program for high schoolers around the world every summer and each week we do different Global issue workshops and one of our like themes that we do workshops on and have discussions about is education and we did our first program in like the summer of 2021 and

40:54 um of course like no education system is perfect and there’s lots of things in the American education system that can be improved but I think I never like realized how lucky I was to be in the American education system until I was talking with my peers from other countries where like they basically go to school for like the entire day and then go to school after that for like review classes and cram classes and I guess I didn’t realize how much of a privilege it was that I get to spend so much time on extracurriculars and passion projects like the world in us and get a lot of autonomy over which classes I get to take and I actually get to choose which classes I get to take and have electives and things like that while still acknowledging like all the things that need to be fixed in the American education system I realized how lucky I am and like the relative degree

41:41 of freedom and autonomy that’s given to students over um how they shape their educational trajectory uh so that’s like a kind of specific thing but that’s something that’s always just stuck with me from um some of the exchanges we’ve run and again I think something that even though I’m like running the organization I learn from the people we serve every day it’s good interesting to see how your sense of perspective shifted uh through that so my last question would be what advice would you have to other people uh coming after you in community service and looking to apply to my impact challenge I would say first um with any community service project think deeply about what issue it is that you want to solve and about what resources people networks are already

42:27 tied into and what kind of skill sets you have that and then use those Reflections to shape the strategy or approach you take to solving that issue so that you were trying to solve the issue in the way that makes the most sense with um your strengths and weaknesses and then also I think in general it’s important to just genuinely care about the issue um you’re trying to make an impact on and of course there’s like such this is like such an amazing program and it’s such an honor to like be rewarded But ultimately the purpose of your service should be um to serve your community at its core and I think having a genuine passion for the impact that you’re making regardless

43:12 of what like external rewards you may or may not receive or recognition you may or may not receive for that I think is really important and that way when you do end up applying to something like the my impact challenge um I think your true passion for what you do um will really come through and I think that is also what makes what will make your application more compelling is having a like a genuine story behind what you’re doing and um a Clear Vision of how you’re going to continue driving for that impact well thank you so much for talking to us today again congratulations on the grand prize and uh you know we look forward to hopefully future partnership with you and and good luck on your future endeavors thank you so much thank you Carolyn for your

43:58 amazing work we hope that you’ll be able to continue your efforts in the future and from all of us at the Bill of Rights Institute congratulations and thank all of you for watching it’s always such a pleasure to see what America’s youth can do and that’s why we love my impact challenge so much now that brings this year’s my impact challenge to a close but there are plenty of opportunities involved a partner organization organizational youth Leadership Council rhizome and the dozens of other organizations in your community doing amazing work if you’ve already started on a service project keep going if you haven’t go to myimpactchallenge.org and check out our six online lessons so you can design a service project targeted to your local community and always mark your calendars my impact

44:44 challenge 2024 will be open for submissions on September 11th 2023 we hope to see you all then and thank you for making an impact in your community as however large or small see you next year [Music]