Every year, when it comes time to review the Diller Teen Tikkun Olam Award nominations, all interested adults wonder, in amazement, the same question: “What do I do when I’m your age?”
That’s according to Jen Smith, executive director of the Helen Diller Family Foundation. The awards program rewards 15 young Jewish leaders across the country with $36,000 in popularity from their paintings to make the world worse.
The show was introduced in 2007 through philanthropist Helen Diller, who died in 2015. She believed in the strength of young people to replace the global, a trust backed by former beneficiaries. Among them is Jordan Grabelle, who creates literacy kits for underserved communities through Love Letters for Literacy, and Abe Baker-Butler, who raises awareness about young people who smoke and vape through Student Against Nicotine.
This year’s winners seek projects that address the highest and challenging desires of our society, adding refugee empowerment, equity in technology, and resources for the homeless.
“These are teenagers who see a problem, tactics to make a difference, see it through it and motivate others to participate,” Smith said.
These are the profiles of six of this year’s winners, illustrating a variety of interests and experiences. Learn more about the full cohort here.
Siena Nazarian, 17 years old
Sienna Nazarian was 12 when she began collecting tools for Syrian refugees as part of her bat mitzvah project. An avid pianist, Nazarian, a Persian Jew, sought to mix her passion for music with the concept of tikkun olam.
Nazarian, who hails from Beverly Hills, has an innate sense of connection to refugee reports: His circle of relatives fled Iran during the 1970s revolution, when being Jewish meant they were unsure. Today, he says, they still communicate about the helplessness someone would possibly feel when fleeing a country.
In ninth grade, after seeing several refugee organizations reject his efforts to worry because he was too young, Nazarian co-founded the Refugee Empowerment Project, a small club at his school through which students participated in service projects that put them in contact with refugees around the world. their communities.
“You’re never too young or too remote to be able to have the effect you need,” he said. “Starting small and engaging other young people in this work is the most challenging part. “
In March 2020, at the age of 15, Nazarian expanded the allowance beyond his school, registering it as 501(c)(3). She created an English tutoring program for refugees, from youth to students, to learn English. From there, the curriculum evolved towards tutoring in all subjects.
But for Nazarian, his nonprofit’s network guidance systems are the most important thing. Through those one-day orientation sessions, volunteers walk with refugees through the communities in which they settle, providing them with a personalized list of landmarks and facts they “need to know” in their local communities. language.
During a networking orientation, Nazarian gave Gracia, a woman his age from El Salvador, an excursion to the Griffith Park Observatory in Los Angeles.
“He told us it was the most productive day he’d ever had in America,” Nazarian said. “Making a connection with someone my age who has enjoyed a life so different from mine has come full circle. “
Cameron Samuels, 18
When Cameron Samuels attended a school board meeting in November to denounce a policy banning schools from LGBTQ websites, he was the only student in the room.
No one in the room applauded when Samuels finished speaking. Instead, they said, everyone was looking at them.
“I felt so alone because members of the network kept getting on the table and making statements against the LGBTQ network,” said Samuels, who lives in Katy, Texas, “especially in the preference to ban books with queer characters and authors. “
Samuels first discovered his school district’s policy opposing access to LGBTQ websites in his first year. While for an assignment for their art class and virtual animation, they tried to make a stop at The Advocate, an LGBTQ news source. But when they tried to access the site, they won an error message.
“It was in the category of ‘choice of sexual lifestyles’ and, in parentheses, GLBT,” Samuels said. my best school called my identity choice and not normal. “
Samuels began running to organize network members and academics to advocate for LGBTQ rights. And while Samuels had fun alone at that assembly last November, at the upcoming assemblies, they and their peers filled the board assemblies with support.
Their presence had a significant effect. After meeting with district officials, Samuels asked the school to unblock 8 websites, adding Human Rights Campaign and Peace Lag; they hope to succeed in unlocking more. And with the help of other scholars in the district of 90,000 scholars, Samuel also introduced e-book distribution. and distributed them to the nine best schools in the district.
Their efforts have also expanded beyond the district: They now hold rallies and e-book distributions in Texas, from Houston to the capital city of Austin.
“I realized that the looks I got at the assembly were stairs to climb,” Samuels said.
Hailey Richman, 15 years old
Hailey Richman has collected and donated more than 100,000 puzzles as part of paintings by Kid Caregivers, a nonprofit she founded.
Richman began babysitting at the age of 9. Feeling lonely and isolated after his grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, Richman, who lives in Plainview, New York, sought to start an online organization that provides recommendations to children whose loved ones they enjoy. suffers from Alzheimer’s.
Around the same time, she and her grandmother were running in a puzzle from the Eiffel Tower, a stop at the landmark was one of her grandmother’s favorite places, when Richman saw that her grandmother was restless.
“I just wasn’t in a good mood,” Richman said. But solving the riddle helped her, put her in a better mood and give her something to say. “
Richman began his studies and learned that the puzzles were for cognitive stimulation, which can help other people with Alzheimer’s disease. Inspired, she presented an initiative for child caregivers, called Puzzle Time. As part of this project, student volunteers are paired with a patient with Alzheimer’s disease. disease to solve puzzles together. Since then, Puzzle Time has grown to involve 2,000 student volunteers and operates in all 50 states and nine countries.
“I hope that other people can take this dish with them, that solving a puzzle can make a difference in someone’s life, and that no one is too young to give back,” he said.
Gédéon Buddenhaugen, 18 years old
While tutoring English as a momentary language to a low-income third-grader in 2021, Gideon Buddenhaugen asked his student if he had ever heard of computer science.
He hadn’t, which made Buddenhaugen think.
Buddenhaugen is a Jew of color: his mother is a white Ashkenazi Jew and his father is Ethiopian. Growing up in Oakland, California, he said, he had observed a consistent lack of equity between generations in his community.
The result of those observations and interactions like the ones he had with his third-grader Buddenhaugen’s nonprofit, Leadership in Motion. Through this, she matches the school’s best academics of color with the middle school’s academics of color to provide them with personalized computer science classes.
“We try to have this dynamic of color scholars learning from mentors who can serve as role models that reflect an identity to them,” buddenhaugen said, a dynamic that “develops a sense of network in this new tech space. “
This summer, Leadership in Motion is an extensive four-week summer, founded in the lab area of the Google Code Next program. (Buddenhaugen graduated from the program. ) For two hours, twice a week, 10 outstanding academics and two school mentors Meet to learn more about computer science. Using Google Code Next resources, he aims to expand his project and grow his organization in the Bay Area and New York City.
“I hope that academics can see themselves diversifying the computer science box and that they can see generation as a box they can go into, and that they will be intimidated by the lack of diversity that exists in this space,” he said.
“For others, I hope Leadership in Motion will motivate them to follow the path of creating equitable systems to improve their own communities in any way or form that manifests for them. “
Amelia Fortgang, 18 years old
Amelia Fortgang stood on the steps of San Francisco City Hall, in a sea of faces of other people her age.
On September 24, 2021, Fortgang spoke at the Global Youth Climate Strike, which he helped organize through the Bay Area Youth Climate Summit, an advocacy network that mobilizes top academics to inform themselves and take action on climate change.
Fortgang founded the Bay Area Youth Climate Summit in September 2020. Since then, he has held 55 workshops for students from top schools, aimed at the lighter, discussing TikToks climate activism on Zoom, and the heavier, organizing climate strikes.
For the climate strike, she and 1,000 other academics from top local schools marched from the Embarcadero, in front of U. S. Senator Dianne Feinstein’s office, to City Hall, where speeches were delivered on the steps of the building.
In his, titled “10 Lessons I Never Learned About Climate Change in School,” Fortgang on Reasons for Hope.
“The most important lesson I have to teach other people is that you can make a difference,” he said. “You may not be able to vote, but you can still mobilize for systemic policy change. “
“For example, before I voted in my first election last month, I spoke with officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, spoke on the steps of City Hall, and even wrote to my representatives. This shows that young people are powerful. Even if we don’t have a vote, we still have a vote.
Fortgang said his favorite occasion organized through the Bay Area Youth Climate Summit so far was a virtual career exhibit where other people from environmentally-related fields spoke, adding an environmental lawyer, a photographer who specializes in climate change and someone who works in California. Energy Board.
The occasion was intended to last forty-five minutes, he said, but lasted more than two hours.
“People stayed in their subcommittee rooms and chatted with other amazing people in environmental races,” he said. it needs to be a component of it. “
Lindsay Sobel, 18
Growing up in Los Angeles, Lindsay Sobel saw other homeless people walking the streets without shoes, many of whom were children.
So when he was thinking about concepts for his bat mitzvah task in 2016, he knew he wanted to do anything to help. Shoes for Souls, a task through which Sobel collected new and used shoes to give to the homeless, was born.
“Many of us take shoes for granted,” Sobel said, “but for the homeless, they don’t have the ones that are undeniably must-have like the shoes that many other people and I have in abundance. “
To date, the task has collected and distributed 52,000 pairs of shoes in local schools, camps and synagogues.
In 2020, when COVID-19 hit, Sobel replaced his approach. He asked for Shoes for Souls to be a 501(c)(3), allowing him to settle for financial donations, which are then used to buy shoes. It has also initiated partnerships with Footlocker and Nike through which corporations donate their products to Shoes for Souls, which are then distributed directly to the community.
“You might see me running Shoes for Souls for my paintings when I’m older,” Sobel said. “Just running with and helping others in my community, nothing like that in life. “
A few years ago, he was handing out shoes to a youth organization in Compton when he saw a child sitting alone.
“Hey, do you need to come and a pair of shoes?” she asked him.
The boy, who was tall, told her he didn’t think they had a pair of shoes that were compatible with his feet. “Of course I do,” Sobel told him.
He went to the trash and, behind it, found a couple of his length – 16.
When she put her shoes, the boy smiled.
“The smile stayed with me,” he said. It’s the smile of having a new pair of shoes, not anything like that. “
Jordan Greene is an editorial intern at The Forward. Contact her at greene@forward. com.
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