December | Featured Stories 2019
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These Australian students decided to tackle stress in education through a different kind of therapy programme.
In 2018, students from Hastings Secondary College came up with an idea to set up a dog therapy programme at school to allow students to visit the therapy dog during moments of stress and be better adapted to secondary school life.
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This group of students introduced a new system that gave safe access to clean drinking water for the whole school
SChildren from a school in India were unable to access drinkable water due to leaky taps and bees around the areas so to tackle the drinkable water shortage they installed new taps and plastered messages around them to conserve the water.
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A group of French students devised a way to feed the hungry and reduce food wastage.
Children observed some beggars lived in the square in front of school who were hungry, and were outraged when they learned that at the same time so much food is wasted in the school canteen. They invented a "Solidarity Cupboard" to tackle both of these issues also decided to collect the food themselves and bring it once a week to a nearby NGO doing food distribution.
November | Featured Stories 2019
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These students created compliment wall and mentoring scheme to improve mental health around the school.
In Idaho, United States, a group of students noteiced there was a trajic youth suicide epidemic in their state and wanted to understand the underlying reason for youth suicides. From their research on mental health, they then created a compliment wall and mentored younger students on resilience in order to promote healthy habits
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Heran, Lucas and their friends created gardens out of unused areas in their school.
Students from Chile noticed there were areas around school that were almost completely unused and felt they could be repurposed. They decided to turn them into usable gardens where the students could learn how to grow plants.
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A group of Serbian students designed and implemented three different initiatives to improve collaboration and reduce bullying.
These children noticed that there were a lot of fights and disrespectful behaviour in their school. So to tackle this, they celebrated 'Tolerance Day', installed a 'Confession Wall', and created a 'Use and Return' corner where children who forgot to bring necessary materials for classwork could borrow them for the day from others that had spares.
October | Featured Stories 2019
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Students created an awareness campaign in and around school to increase respect for all support staff
This group of students from Singapore felt that their support staff was underappreciated and they did not know them very well. One of the cleaners was even punched in the face, so students started talking with the support staff and devised a way to help this.
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These young children installed height appropriate bins to enable people of all ages to throw garbage away properly.
This group of 5 year old Spanish kids could not reach the garbage bins in their community because they were too high. They decided they needed to lower the garbage bins and successfully persuaded the local government to lower them throughout the area.
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This class of students decided to reduce and reuse litter in their local areas by re-purposing it creatively.
This group of young changemakers from Zimbabwe felt that their community was becoming unsafe and unsanitary due to the amounts of litter around so they started picking the litter up on their way to school and using it to create items such as musical instruments and carpets.
September | 2019 Featured Stories
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Students created a product to help people make it through earthquakes safely.
These three boys from Taiwan designed and made a prototype of an earthquake emergency bag that is lined with a pillow to protect your head and contains a whistle inside to attract attention and help.
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These Israeli students create a communal space at school to tackle loneliness and sadness.
Kids were not interacting during lunchtimes so this group painted the benches and walls of an area similar to a very colourful bus stop and posted someone on duty to get people talking, interacting and making friends. They called it the 'Friendship Station' - where kids now go during lunchtimes to socialise.
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This group of students created low cost urinals from plastic bottles for their school washrooms.
Finding the stench that emanated from their school toilet unbearable, students at a government school in Trichy district, India, designed cheap urinals using 20-litre plastic bottles that were clean and easy to install.
August | Featured Stories 2019
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This group of students from India created and conducted activities to help students empathise and relate to each other.
In 2011, students of APL Global School, Chennai, found that the quiet students felt ignored, judged and teased during their time in school. They initiated activities like a 'Silent Hour' where they taped participants' mouths for them to experience how it feels to not be able to talk, and created Compliment Cards and a Togetherness Wall to unite the students.
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These Brazilian girls created a focus group and ran an awareness campaign to help them and others embrace their identities.
This group of girls felt uncomfortable letting their hair grow naturally and curly because mainstream society's views of beauty was straight hair. They decided to join forces, let their afros grow out and embrace it - while promoting the same attitudes to others to embrace their natural identities.
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13 year olds from Colombia created furniture from used tyres and gathered support from environmental groups to raise awareness.
In 2012, Ivan and his friends at Victoria Manzur School, Monteria, realised that burning of waste tyres pollutes the environment and affects people's health. To prevent such pollution, they made creative furniture from tyres.
July | Featured Stories 2019
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Anita and her friends built fences out of recyclable materials to ensure everyone's trip to school was safer.
This group of 15 year olds from Bhutan felt that their journey to school was dangerous and, in 2014, decided to use local bamboo to erect a fence around the trickier portions of the walk to protect students from hazard.
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These young Spanish students created boxes to store mobile phones so they could spend more quality time with their parents.
In 2018, this group from Santa Teresa de Jesús Tarragona, saw that adults were not aware of how anxiously they were living their lives and created decorated boxes in which to store mobile phones to help them create more present family time.
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A group of 5 students from Taipei, Taiwan saw the number of injured birds around their school and created a hospital for birds.
In 2011, these students spotted many injured birds in their school. They learnt how to treat the injuries of the birds, feed them and they even set up a hospital for birds in school with the ultimate goal of sending them back to nature.
June | Featured Stories 2019
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Diana and her classmates created floating first aid kits to help those affected during natural disasters.
In 2017, this group of students from the Philippines were shocked by the lack of first aid kits in homes within their community so they designed and created first aid kits which would also be able to help during tsunamis, and distributed them to around the local area.
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This group of students in Colombia designed a way to improve water quality in an affordable way.
The students were concerned about the quality of the water they consumed from their village so they created 10 homemade water filters for the community and the school restaurant to use, all made from natural materials.
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A class of young students in India started teaching their cleaning staff invaluable literacy skills.
In 2013, students of Kaligi Ranganathan Secondary School in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, felt that the cleaning staff of the school was not being respected enough, so they conducted regular sessions to teach them reading and writing, with two staff members attaining a college degrees.
May | Featured Stories 2019
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Young superheroes from Holy Cross Lutheran, Hongkong were bothered about their school spaces with less greenery around.
They took up the responsibility to get an understanding of different types of plants, how to sow the seeds and how to take care of the plants. They involved other students from their school to take care of the plants and finally were successful to create a greener school.
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These group of students from Peru felt a need to strengthen family bonds as their parents heard them but didn't really listen.
These children teach us the meaning of relationships and the importance of communication in them. While some adults may ignore the quality of communication that exist in their busy lives with their loved ones, these young idealists did not.
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Young 11-year-old superheroes from Charles Rice Learning Centre, USA were bothered about the Trap houses in the community which posed a threat to children's safety.
When the children noticed ‘trap houses’ in their community resulting in inappropriate problems by drug users, they decided to take charge and address the problem. As responsible and concerned citizens, they met the police and made sure that they close down the ‘trap houses’.
April | Featured Stories 2019
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This group of students in Bhutan launched a massive campaign to reduce the plastic waste and encourage indigenous alternatives
After seeing the amount of litter in their community, these students created a zero waste campaign and presented it first throughout their school, then at other schools, garbage festivals and public gatherings across the country - and even set up booths to explain the alternatives to packaged foods.
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Estelle and her three friends created a smartphone application to monitor daily health habits.
This group of 16 year olds from Singapore created an integrated smartphone app, the L.I.F.E (Live It Fully Everyday) App, to help people regulate their lifestyle and collect date for the Ministry of Health.
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Jaafar approached a range of different companies and organisations to persuade them to start allotting particular days for community service.
This 11 year old boy from Jordan convinced corporates and individuals to commit to co-creating a more equal society. Companies and institutions chose a day to give back to the community each year. This even included laptop donation to talented programmers to develop solutions.
March | Featured Stories 2019
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Islaine and her two friends organised professional training workshops to increase self esteem in their community in Brazil
In 2017, these three students realised there was low self-confidence within the community, especially among the indigenous parts of the population, so they created an avenue for these individuals to share their skills with the school and local community through leading professional training workshops - making them feel valued and confident by spreading their knowledge to others.
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Omar and 9 of his Lebanese classmates decided there is enough poverty in the world and arranged a donation drive to clothe the less fortunate.
This group of students from Aisha School recognised that there was a way to help the large amount of homeless people in the town centre of 'Saida'. Last year, 2018, they organised for second hand clothes to be collected at their school, dry cleaned them and distributed them to children, orphans and widows in need.
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Prithi and her 15-year-old friends from India tackled gender equality throughout their school and beyond.
In 2016, students at Chettinad Vidya Mandir, Tamil Nadu, wanted to break gender specific traditions, so they started with their school. They reversed several practices, for example, boys started taking the morning prayers for the first time. They raised funds for education of some girls, spread awareness through street plays, and contacted the Rotary Club for equal health services for all.
February | Featured Stories 2019
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KIDS HELPING KIDS:
CAROLINA AND TWO OF HER DANISH FRIENDS CREATED A TOY RECYCLING ORGANISATIONLast year, 2018, a group of 14 year old girls in Denmark didn't feel it was right for some kids to have lots of toys while others had none. So they started an NGO that provides toys to 'Super Guardians' and when they no longer want the toys, collects and redistributes the toys to other 'Super Guardians'.
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Hélène's FRIENDS IN BENIN STOPPED HER FORCED MARRIAGE, WHICH ALLOWED HER TO FINISH HER EDUCATION
Girls were being denied education and forced to marry due to poverty. They gathered support from school and community leaders, created awareness to get forced marriages banned and bring the girls back to education.
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KARLA AND HER CLASSMATES IN COLOMBIA REJUVENATED A BARREN VALLEY WITH TREES AND PLANTS.
Students at IE Rural Hojas Anchas, in 2014, were disturbed by the lack of green cover in their valley. They created a toy plane "Cigabionica" using recycled materials. The plane would fly over the land and drop seeds, as well as be able to document it. After four months, the region regained its green cover.
January | Featured Stories 2019
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RESPONSE-ABILITY:
YOGESH FROM INDIA DESIGNED A SYSTEM TO HELP BRING HIS FRIEND KAMLESH BACK TO SCHOOLIn 2012, students at Payakoi Primary School, Gujarat, wanted to help their friend with Polio. They first designed a vehicle from tricycle to pull him to school everyday. When it broke, they took turns to bring him to school, sometimes carrying him, and made sure to play games in which he could join in.
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11 YEAR-OLDS LAURA, SARA AND THEIR FRIENDS FROM SPAIN BECAME THE WATER GUARDIANS TO SAVE WATER.
11 year-olds Laura, Sara and their friends at Colegio Santa Teresa De Jesus, Valladolid in Spain noticed that water was being misused and not managed properly. They installed water collection containers for rainwater. In the washrooms, they made an accountability chart to map water use. To raise funds to fix leaky taps, they created craft products and sold them by organising a fair.
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10-YEAR-OLD GEFFEN FROM ISRAEL CREATED A COMMUNITY GARDEN FOR PEOPLE TO COME TOGETHER AND INTERACT
10-year-old Geffen and her friends from Democratic School, Kfar Saba, realised that there was no place in the commuity for elderly people and the community to come together and interact. Roping in primary school kids, they built a sustainable furniture by turning a neglected plot of land into a lush green garden.