Rubbish

At 11 years old, Adam El Rafey is a change advocate, innovator and learning enthusiast that inspires others to follow their curiosities and find their voices at any age. Adam is a role model to young people globally, being one of the youngest TEDx speakers in the world and an advocate for amplifying more diverse voices in STEM.

In the summer of 2015, during Zain’s family vacation, he met one of his distant uncles for the very first time. He was shocked to learn that his uncle was paralyzed, unable to even use a spoon. Since then, Zain has strived to make robotics rehabilitation more affordable and accessible for paralysed patients. He started his initiative, ExoHeal at the age of 16 and has since helped more than 50 patients have faster rehabilitation and has enabled over 100 patients to feel empowered. In addition, Zain is an avid advocate for mental health, now developing a platform to eliminate loneliness.

Zahra Al Hilaly is an intersectional feminist, pushing for equitable representation within decision making for marginalised constituencies, including women of colour and migrant and refugee women.Zahra is determined to be heard. A first-generation Australian from a Palestinian and Iraqi family, she advocates for gender equality and sustainable change at local, national and international levels. She helped deliver Christmas Island’s first leadership and advocacy summit for young people, which led to the creation of the Christmas Island Youth Association, encouraging young people to speak out about issues that affect them. Zahra has spoken for Australian youth at the United Nations and is in the UN Women’s 30 for 2030 Network of young gender equality champions. She is a participant of the UN Women’s Generation Equality Youth Task Force, where she aided in drafting of the Global Young Feminist Manifesto and contributed to the pledge of 40 billion dollars for gender equality initiatives by 2026.

Vinisha Umashankar is the inventor of the Solar Ironing Cart. After thinking seeing the amount of burnt charcoal thrown on the street by ironing vendors, Vinisha came up with an idea. Instead of using charcoal, they could use the sun. At 12 years old, they started designing a cart that had solar panels to power a steam iron. Now at 16, Vinisha has spoken at the U.N.'s climate change summit, COP26. In 2020, Umashankar won the Children's Climate Prize, a Swedish award for young innovators.

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.

Vaibhav Mishra is the founder and CEO of the International Youth Research Initiative (IYRI), a student-led organization that provides research opportunities for students by providing scientific resources, science journals, classes, internships, research programs, conferences, and a worldwide community of student researchers. IYRI also runs a Summer Research Institute (SRI) program that recently resulted in nine published papers in the fields of bioinformatics, genomics, and machine learning.Partnering with America’s Promise Alliance and receiving sponsorship from the Art of Problem Solving, IYRI has now grown to have 100+ members throughout 4 continents, 17 countries, and 7 US states and help create the next generation of student researchers creating scientific solutions for some of the world’s biggest problems.