Rising Star of the Year 2000

I'm Srijanita Maurya, 17 years old Senior high school student, TEDx Speaker and the founder The Animal Patronage. Well for the past 8 years, I have been working for the animals with my mom in my local area, but during COVID19 when the lockdown came and all were locked in their houses, I felt that we were unable to help them. We were only helping those who were in the area of my society and were present there and we were not well globally spread out. but when the covid came it was like no one can have those sources to provide them food because we were locked in homes. There I got the idea to start my organization which is animal patronage which is a youth-led organization that comes for animal welfare especially. The organization focuses on becoming the voice of the animals. We want to fight for their rights and protect them from human cruelties and extinction. till now it is a global nonprofit organization which is based in India and aims to educate, inspire and empower the youth for the speechless who cannot speak for their rights and to make a difference in society. Somehow we got a chance, I got a team to spread out currently, we are operating in India, Africa, South Korea, and many others in the UK and other countries, more than 18 plus organisations are there which have collaborated with us. but then a special collaboration we got from the Crimson Youth Entrepreneurship Society the Harvard university students. Cherry on top, we got awarded with President George W Bush's Foundation Points of Light Inspirational Honor Roll 2022 and also got recognised by famous American singer and author Lady Gaga's organization named Channel kidness. We have rescued more than 10 dogs and cats. Donated INR 30,501 for their food and water installation. We started in 2021, since then, we hosted The Animal Patronage Podcast for and by students. Besides our frequent pop-ups that aim to empower young youth through providing inspiration and ways to work for Environment, we also bring awareness posters and digital literacy workshops to marginalized communities with little-to-no access to animal welfare.

Vee (Varaidzo) Kativhu is a 23 year old YouTube visionary, education activist and founder of the youth empowerment organisation, Empowered by Vee. She uses her platform to share tips and advice to help underprivileged and underrepresented people from across the world recognise their own academic ability and potential. A graduate of both Oxford and Harvard Universities, Vee has been named a Diana Award Legacy Award Recipient, a United Kingdom Rare Rising Star, a Future Leader and The Vice Chancellor’s Diversity Champion. Recently Vee has published her debut book, ‘Empowered; Live your life with passion and purpose’, a practical and motivational self-help book for young people. She has also taken on roles as a LinkedIn Changemaker, TEDx speaker and BBC Teach presenter, achieving many other accolades in the process. With a following of over 300,000 across her social media channels and her Empowered by Vee community, Vee is an inspiration to anyone who has faced adversity and made it through.

Ara Kusuma is the Co-Founder of the Aha! Project, a social initiative that provides tools for creative and quality education at home for underprivileged children in rural areas in Indonesia. In collaboration with teachers, a graphic designer, and 35 local champions across 12 provinces in Indonesia, they delivered worksheets and art supplies to 1600+ children in the COVID pandemic and equipped the local adult allies with the how to's to assist the learning activities in the neighbourhood.

Chloe Chia is the Founder of Munch. Launching in September 2020, they had 650 high school students using their product, and were partnered with 25 restaurants. At 16, their team were interviewed by Y-Combinator. After personal business experience, Chloe realised that a lot of the entrepreneurship programs for high school students focused on business plans over traction. Chloe decided to start a monthly newsletter known as The Lemonade Stand, providing advice on how to help students earn their first dollar. The newsletter has now grown to over 1,000 high school founders.

Chloe Lau is the Founder of YouMatter, a community organization fighting to create equal opportunity for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. Since 2019, Chloe has run remote internships for recent grads with disabilities, ran the YouMatter Week, and delivered COVID-19 care packages across 10+ HK districts. Their work has been featured on SCMP, RTHK Radio 3, Kids4Kids, Help Us Gather & Zonta.

Claire Wang is the Founder of AngelHacks, which is a hackathon that empowers students to learn computer science. Through their hackathons, they've inspired over 1000 young people, provided them with tours to Tesla HQ, and connected them to professionals at companies like Deep AI, GitHub and more.

The Earlywork community was founded in April 2021 by Atlassian product manager Daniel Brockwell, Jonathan Herman, and Marina Wu. The trio bonded over a shared goal of making tech jobs and start-up gigs more visible to their peers. Since then, they've helped over 2000 young people discover the careers of tomorrow in tech, startups & social impact at earlywork.co

Inspired by the adoption of her 11 siblings and her refugee background, Esthe Abiyar is a human rights advocate and activist in her community. In June 2020, she founded The Advocacy Collective, where she raised awareness around the experiences of refugees, asylum seekers and minorities in Australia. Today, Esther continues to be a role model for young changemakers, representing over 200,000 young people as a member of Queensland Youth Parliament and representing Asia Pacific youth at the Dr Martin Luther King Memorial Summit. Esther is also a committee member of Youth Voice Brisbane, a Student Voice Consultant at Brisbane BCE, and a youth delegate for UN Youth Australia.

Gabrielle Tan is the founder of Horizon of Hope, where she has helped thousands through her work supporting refugee education. Dedicated to advocating for a better planet, Gabby was a key member of the UK Student Climate Network who mobilised a nationwide movement of 300,000 people striking for the climate in September 2019 and an Advocate for the Global Schools Program. Gabby also represented the UK and Malaysia on the World Oceans Day Youth Council and has led a range of campaigns and events on eliminating single-use plastics.

In February 2020, Hannah Senior, co-founded an initiative with fellow student Minseo Kim, to keep the elderly connected during lockdown. They mobilised an army of high school students for their project, called ‘Letters Against Iso’, to reach out to aged care homes. Since its humble beginnings, the non-profit has grown to a team of 1000 volunteers globally and has sent over 10,000 encouragement letters to tackle isolation. An accomplished speaker, Hannah has also graced the TEDx stage and is a Future Minds Network alumni. Similarly, Minseo has received numerous accolades including The John Button Prize, awarded to the best essay on Australia’s future by a student younger than nineteen.

Jeremiah Thoronka invented a device that uses kinetic energy from traffic to generate clean power. As the Founder of Optim Energy, Jeremiah is on a mission to build a sustainable energy sector in Sierra Leone, diminish greenhouse gas emissions, and educating citizens about energy efficiency. Today, Optim Energy has powered 150 households and 15 schools that hosts over 9000 students free of cost to tackle energy poverty.

John is the Founder of The Cosmos Championship, an online platform that brings together teenagers from all around the world to engage in debates through Zoom. In the midst of a pandemic, John's love of public speaking inspired him to start the initiative.Today, there are over 3,500 people signed up from 90 countries, as well as a global leadership team of 56 – all of whom are aged 20 or younger.