Social Impact of the Year 2000

Grace is the founder of Research to Empower, an educational non-profit to inspire, support, and empower the next generation of aspiring young researchers. RTE motivates them to become lifetime learners of creativity, innovation, and critical thinking. They have supported 26,700+ students (ages 7-18) as well as educators, administrators, youth leaders, and policymakers across 5 continents in 140+ countries.

As a dedicated Pakistani activist and founder of Girls United for Human Rights, Hadiqa Bashir stands at the forefront of advancing girls' rights and gender equality in her country. With initiatives spanning early marriage, sexual health, education, poverty alleviation, and climate change, she demonstrates a deep commitment to sustainable development and champions the importance of gender equality in tribal Pakistani communities to emphasise education's transformative power.As a young leader for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and a Global Fellow for gender equality, Bashir was elected a Women Deliver Young Leader and received multiple awards recognizing her commitment to gender equality, including the Asian Girls Ambassador Award, the Acumen Fellow Award, and the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award.

Hana-Rawhiti Kareariki Maipi-Clarke is a New Zealand politician, representing Te Pāti Māori as a Member of Parliament since the 2023 New Zealand general election. She is the youngest MP since James Stuart-Wortley.

Elucidate Education (Elucidate) is a not-for-profit organisation that creates high quality textbooks and free online resources for Australian high-school content to ensure every Australian student has the support they need to achieve at school. They have empowered over 82,000 young people worldwide with access to quality resources.

At the age of 12, Maya started the Autism Siblings and Friends Network to create an inclusive country where my autistic brother, and others with special needs and disabilities, would not be discriminated against and would have equal access to educational opportunities. Together, with youth volunteers, they have trained more than 800 young people as advocates, some of whom have chosen to pursue careers in special needs.

Naomi co-founded the ‘Alliance Against Antimicrobial Resistance’ (Triple-A) to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in low-resource communities through education, research, and advocacy. Her efforts include creating AMR-infographic campaigns in 53 languages and empowering 30 youth leaders to organise sensitisation programmes across Nigeria, Kenya, and Malawi, impacting over 4,000 individuals.

Klein, a student at Stanford, founded Global Minds Initiative as a 15-year-old high schooler in Pittsburgh in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election after witnessing discrimination against immigrant and refugee students at her school. It's now a nonprofit with chapters in 25 schools that holds an afterschool program matching English as a second language students with English-speaking students and organizes events to educate students about other cultures in an effort to combat intolerance. It has raised $1 million in donations and corporate grants and sponsorships.

Rania Zuri is the founder and CEO of The LiTEArary Society, an entirely youth-led nonprofit organization that works to end book deserts for disadvantaged preschool children. The LiTEArary Society has donated over $326,000-worth of brand-new books to over 28,000 disadvantaged children in all 50 states since its inception in October of 2021. The organization has partnerships with and has received funding from Scholastic, Inc., Barnes & Noble, Hershey's, Pilot Pens and Starbucks. Zuri is also the youngest author of a U.S. Senate resolution. Her bipartisan resolution, National Early Childhood Literacy Awareness Day, works to strengthen literacy development for more than 15 million children in primary schools nationwide, through corporate partnerships, national public library campaigns and new book donation programs.Read Less

Sahithi Radha is a 16-year-old changemaker, previously India’s youngest UNEP ambassador. She founded E-Cycl, an e-waste recycling initiative. A nationally recreated circular economy system. Involving recycling, awareness through hundreds of youth, protecting sanitation workers, and reforming public policy. They've collected over ten thousand kilograms of e-waste, supported 500 sanitation workers through healthcare and educational means and have had our work showcased in a dozen prominent publications (Deezen Magazine, Pioneer).

Selin Ozgursoy is a 16-year-old young woman from Ankara, Turkey. She is a STEM promoter, innovator and change maker. As the Founder & Executive Director of Equity Estrel, a youth-led “Women in STEM” nonprofit which currently operates in the Middle East and pioneers projects to engage more girls in the field, Selin leads a team of 3,000 young individuals including volunteers and directors, all carrying the high mission to ensure equity among all. Their first project Go Pink or Go Code has reached more than 5,000 women and they have received 200+ hours of coding. As for the statistics that have been officially reported to us, 62% of these women have found employment in tech companies. With our project Debug Disabilities we reached 4,000 disabled individuals, mostly visually impaired. They produced 30+ scientific book voiceovers through our collaborations with other nonprofits in 6 languages. We are also on the verge of establishing our platform Estrella, an app that provides disabled people with assistance in education and their pursuit of technological prowess. Within the context of our recent project Stack Love, we were able to build 4 libraries in Tanzania (3) and Prague (1), and donate 3,000 USD worth of stationary and supplies to village schools in 7 cities in Turkey.

It's been three years since Castellon--frustrated with how she and other neurodivergent students were being treated in schools--decided to take matters into her own hands. She started Neurodiversity Celebration Week in November 2018 as a way to challenge stereotypes and misconceptions about neurological differences. As of March 2022, the now-annual event had expanded to reach 2,600 schools, 200 universities and more than 1,200 companies, including Amazon, Boots, British Gas, Citibank, Dyson and Google. The United Kingdom-based Castellon has also won awards for her books about growing up with au... Read More

Growing up in India and having personal experience with cancer and mental illness, Swetha founded ‘The Lalitha Foundation', It has supported over 3000 cancer patients and caregivers in India, through psychotherapy. Having raised over 2,00,000 INR, they were able to provide patients from marginalized backgrounds with provided free treatment/counselling and follow-ups. A whooping 84% of all patients showed up at follow-up consultations, and a remarkable 72% of them showed significant psychological improvement. In light of COVID-19, they launched a healthcare resources app in collaboration with the Clinton Foundation and a US-based non-profit, that has been used by over 200,000 individuals across India.