Social Impact of the Year 2000

Karimot Odebode is an award-winning poet from Nigeria and the founder of Black Girl’s Dream Initiative, a youth-led organization that aims to close the gender gap in education inclusiveness through the arts, advocacy, research, technology and sports. Karimot is the author of the poetry collection ‘A woman has many names’ and she uses her poetry to foster sustainable development and create a safe world for girls and women. She created the Transform Education anthem for the United Nations Girls Education Initiative and has been featured by the Global Education Summit, Plan International, and BBC Media Action. In 2022, Karimot was recognized by the Ministry of Youth and Sports, Oyo State Government as one of the 100 influential young people for her advocacy work.

Karishma Ali is a football and social entrepreneur from Chitral, Pakistan. In 2016, she represented Pakistan in the International Jubilee games and in the AFL International cup Melbourne. Ali has dedicated her life to breaking barriers for women in sports and ensuring that girls in her hometown of Chitral have more opportunities to play sports. Karishma established Chitral Women’s Sports Club in 2018, a pioneer organization dedicated to providing a safe environment for over 215 Chitrali girls to participate in sports.

At 19, Kess Eruteya founded ‘InclusionZ‘ – an e-learning platform that is helping more than 10,000 young professionals in over 20 countries gain the professional skills they need to thrive. She has spent countless hours creating educational programmes, mentoring sessions, events and corporate partnerships that will allow young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to succeed in the workplace and beyond. Outside of ‘InclusionZ‘, Kess volunteers with CodeYourFuture, a non-profit helping to provide coding courses to refugees and asylum seekers. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA), where she campaigns to promote education and gender equality.

Mariam is a young Palestinian refugee living in Lebanon. Despite the challenges of life as a refugee, at age 19, Mariam founded her own initiative, ‘Alam W Mahay’, to erase illiteracy among street children in Lebanon and to introduce volunteerism among young people to help enhance their skills. Mariam has mentored over 3,200 youths, internationally, on various platforms and programmes. She provides training sessions such as time management, public speaking, storytelling, and project planning – all skills she believes are essential for developing leaders. Mariam also gives motivational and inspirational talks, long-term mentorship, and capacity-building workshops.

Reese is the Founder of ISSIA HK, Hong Kong's largest youth-led nonprofit. We champion global citizenship education, empowering young changemakers through peer-to-peer and project-based learning. Since 2019, ISSIA has involved 300+ volunteers from 80+ schools, launching 30+ projects on SDG 4 & 17; our multimedia content has reached 30,000+ and we've been featured on 15+ platforms, including Nasdaq, World Economic Forum, SCMP, RTHK, etc.As an international speaker, I've spoken to 3000+ attendees at 50+ engagements including global conferences (e.g. World Humanitarian Forum, Asia Pacific International Schools Conference), educational institutions and more. I speak about social entrepreneurship, future of education, youth leadership and more. My website can be found here: reesewong.comI worked at the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong (leading business organization in APAC), launching social impact programs. I also worked at Ashoka, the world's leading community of social entrepreneurs (top #5 NGO in the world), where I managed our storytelling initiative and prototyped a changemaker network. I am a member of UN SDSN Youth, Catalyst 2030, UNESCO HK and was recently elected as a World Economic Forum Global Shaper!

Ryan Hickman realized at age three that he didn’t like seeing discarded bottles and cans lying on the ground, so he did something about it. Hickman started collecting his family’s recyclables and then went with his dad to the local recycling center, where he got $5 for the haul. Now 13, Hickman is running his own business, called Ryan’s Recycling Company. To date, has raised more than $14,000 and helped recycle 1.5 million cans and bottles. All profits from the sale of his merchandise and recycling go to the rescue organization Pacific Marine Mammal Center.

Hailing from a drought-prone area of Maharashtra, Sanskruti understood the problem of declining groundwater. Over the course of three years, Sanskruti and her team of 25 other girls started spreading awareness and generating volunteers to build water management infrastructure like trenches, rainwater harvesting systems and drip irrigation. At first, it was not easy; people didn’t believe girls should or could do the kinds of work they were promoting, and they faced opposition and discrimination from all sides. But following a heavy rainfall, the resources she and her team had built started to work, and the tide began to turn – for both water management and attitudes towards women and girls in her community.

I have created awareness among 2000 people

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.

Alex Dekker is the CEO of Alex Makes Meals. When Alex discovered his sister was barely eating during long hospital shifts, he made her a tray of lasagne. Suffice to say it wouldn’t be his last. In a few weeks, he raised $70,000, broke the record for the quickest charity registration in Australia and grew to a team of 80 volunteers.Since then, Alex Makes Meals has expanded to feed not just health care workers, but anyone in need. They've delivered over 100,000 meals to hospitals, homeless shelters, and youth projects across Australia.

Toluwani Victor’s educational experience growing up was extremely discouraging. He faced shame, poor treatment and even physical harm from teachers because he lacked sufficient funds to pay tuition. In 2013, Toluwani launched Upsurge Global (UG) – a nonprofit organization committed to raising a new cadre of value-driven African leaders. Upsurge Global went on to train 3,500+ young people to use design thinking to positively develop their communities, and supported 200+ students to start their own social initiatives. Since then, they've continued to impact 10,000+ youth in more than 5 countries in Africa and the United Kingdom.

Bellen Woodard is the 10-year-old Founder of Bellen’s More Than Peach™ Project, which uses crayons as a way to tackle perceptions about skin colours among children. When in class, Woodard realised that there was no crayon colour included that represented her actual skin colour as the only Black girl in her grade. Later, she began using her money to create art bundles with more multicultural crayons. As of spring of 2019, Woodard has already donated more than $40,000 worth of art bundles via the More Than Peach project.