Let’s Connect! Rancho
Let’s Connect! Rancho
Project Theme: Community Connection and Sense of Belonging
Years in Existence: 4
Target Audience and Location: Rancho High School students and teachers in Reno, Nevada.
Mission: To foster a sense of comfort between students and teachers by providing fun, cost-free, and community-building-focused opportunities.
Project Description: In 2022, founding Scholar Runzhi Hu and educator Scholar Susan Potts aimed to foster positive interactions between students and teachers at Rancho High School. Their project, Let’s Connect! Rancho, addressed the challenges of remote learning by facilitating connections through school activities, such as a Connection Cafe. This year’s student leader, Ekemini Okon, along with her team, is focused on bridging the gap between groups of students impacted by the lack of connection and social-emotional support. Through a series of after-school activities which include scavenger hunts and trivia games, the team plans for students to find new friends and share more about their experiences at the school. Ekemini is most proud of “the bravery and eagerness that my team has towards making a change in our school community. I am so inspired and proud of our underclassmen, who will later take over this project and are always ready for the next step of our project!”
Mynd Revolution
Project Theme: Mental Health
Years in Existence: 2
Target Audience and Location: Sandra O’Connor High School, Deer Valley High School, and Boulder Creek High School communities in Phoenix, Arizona.
Mission: We advocate for and create wellness centers with school communities to prioritize mental health support and resources.
Project Description: Founding Scholar Brendan Salisbury and educator supporter Ashley Halloff designed a project centered on illuminating the importance of positive mental health practices for high school students in their community. Driven by personal experiences, they established wellness centers at two high schools in hopes of creating spaces for students to connect with one another. This year’s student leaders, Madelene Salisbury and Alexa McCracken, are focused on expanding their wellness centers to a third high school while centralizing mental health resources, providing coping activities for students, as well as creating student sanctuaries to decompress for students and educators.
NorCal Science & Technology Festival
Project Theme: Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math (STEAM) access
Years in Existence: 10
Target Audience and Location: Students within the Lodi Unified School District in Lodi, CA.
Mission: To stimulate student/educator and community engagement in STEAMS by encouraging sustainability and celebrating the fun in science, technology, engineering, arts and math.
Project Description: Founding Bezos Scholar Julie Fukunaga and educatorScholar Sandi Starr were driven by their passion for STEM, leading them to create their project focused on expanding STEAM opportunities for students. Headed into its 10th year, the NorCal Science and Technology Festival aims to boost students’ confidence by hosting a festival and inviting scientists, STEAM practitioners and college students to offer engaging and interactive activities. This year’s student leader, Taylor Smith, is proud of “our fundraising efforts and ability to obtain funding from partnerships and sponsorships that also believe in giving students access to STEAM opportunities.”
Noteworthy Music Club and Festival
Years in Existence: 14
Project Theme: Elementary Music Education
Target Audience and Location: Patrick Henry High School Community and Roanoke County Public School students in Roanoke, Virginia.
Mission: To connect students and teachers who are passionate about music and music education to raise money to sponsor music education and buy new instruments for elementary school students in our community.
Project Description: Founded in 2011 by Scholars Locher Grove and educator Nicole Doherty, The Noteworthy Music Festival celebrates the community’s passion for music while enhancing access to instruments and music education for local elementary school students. Each year, Noteworthy works to fundraise to support one of 17 of Roanoke’s elementary schools’ music programs. Led by this year’s student co-leaders, Mary Clarke and Blair Moon, the team is sponsoring Morning Side Elementary, a Title 1 school serving 237 students in the southeast neighborhood of Roanoke. The project team has hosted multiple fundraising events and has already raised over $3,000 for student instruments. The team looks forward to hosting their annual music festival this May and doubling their fundraising efforts.
POP Festival
Years in Existence: 4
Project Theme: Post-Secondary Exploration
Target Audience and Location: 9-12 grade students at Brown County High School in Indiana
Mission: To equip students with the necessary skills and knowledge to lead a purpose-driven life by connecting them to post-secondary educational institutions and opportunities.
Project Description: Founding Scholar Josephine Fields and educator Scholar Kristi Billings developed The Pursuing Our Purpose (POP) Festival for high school students in grades 9-12 to explore their purpose through a daylong event filled with workshops led by community members, college educators, and local businesses. The goal of the festival is to encourage students to ask questions, build connections, and discover their purpose in an engaging way. This year, led by student leaders Shauna Custard and Taylor Lucas, the POP Festival is focused on ensuring their peers understand the multitude of opportunities and choices they have related to success after high school. Through this year’s guest facilitators, the team is excited to empower students to make purpose-aligned and financially feasible decisions about their next steps.
South Texas Ideas Festival (STXi)
Years in Existence: 9
Project Theme: Education and Civic Engagement
Target Audience and Location: Students and families in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) in South Texas, hosted by students from the Idea Quest College Preparatory School in Edinburg, Texas.
Mission: To create a platform by and for young adults to engage them in an actionable dialogue about culture, community and identity.
Project Description: Founding Scholar Michael Mireles and educator Scholar Marcos Silva created STXi to inspire young people to celebrate their culture and identity through an annual festival featuring community leaders and speakers from the Rio Grande Valley. As STXi heads into its 9th festival year, they are focused on increasing festival attendance by 20%, increasing their social media engagement and ensuring youth feel more connected to their heritage and inspired to celebrate South Texas culture. This year’s STXi co-leaders, Sophia Flores and Anthony Capetillo, are proud of “the networking we’ve done to build connections and accomplished milestones we’ve set out to hit.”
STEM Connect
Project Theme: STEM Inclusion and Support
Years in Existence: 3
Target Audience and Location: STEM Academy students at Harrisonburg High School in Harrisonburg, VA.
Mission: Reignite STEM academic confidence through peer mentorship and exposure to real-world STEM careers and applications.
Project Description: Founding Scholar Anish Aradhey and educator Scholar Danae Delozier, inspired by their shared passion for STEM, recognized the need for more inclusive practices in their high school’s courses. STEM Connect focuses on hosting after-school sessions outside of class to improve study skills, foster connections between underclassmen and upperclassmen, and offer tutoring and study support. This year’s team, led by student leaders Giovanni Sanchez-Garcia and Addison Mason, is focused on reevaluating the overall needs of the students in the STEM academy to further refine their offerings. To increase mentorship, the team has hosted STEMinars, which are quarterly opportunities for student connection; they are also creating mini-lessons where mentors teach their mentees and collaborate with one another on STEM-related activities.
Student Wellness Committee
Project Theme: Mental Health and Wellness, Sense of Belonging
Years in Existence: 4
Target Audience and Location: 9-12th graders at Hightower High School in Missouri City, Texas.
Mission: Provide resources that will assist students with creating a healthy lifestyle that includes physical, mental and nutritional wellness, in addition to being a well-rounded leader in our community.
Project Description: Inspired by their personal experiences with mental health, founding Scholars Isabel Ohakamma and Dr. John Ramon created the Student Wellness Coalition to address mental health challenges students were voicing at their school. To do so, they organized activities centered around self-care, mental hygiene, and stress relief techniques. This year’s student leader, Allison Nguyen, is leading the team to consider how to explore the effects of high expectations of school and academic excellence from society.
Heading into its fourth year, the project continues to host engagement socials, which are aimed at encouraging students to take breaks and engage with others in a social setting.
Unite!
Project Theme: Sense of Belonging
Years in Existence: 3
Target Audience and Location: Union High School in Camas, WA, school community.
Mission: Unite! increases student engagement in school clubs, organizations and activities by hosting club match events and a club showcase.
Project Description: Founding Scholar Jean Lin and educator Scholar Erik Wiitanen set out to increase student engagement in extracurricular activities at Union High School by designing a club matching event where students fill out a survey that pairs them with clubs they might be interested in. This year’s Unite! team, led by student leaders Marley Johnsen and Joanne Lin, is focused on engaging incoming first-year students by having club members attend new student orientations to connect students before enrolling in courses. They aim to connect each incoming first-year student with a student club to increase a sense of belonging and contribute positively to student academics. Marley and Joanne are proud of “the very successful club showcase where groups were able to perform a skit that represented their club and what it’s like to be a part of it.”
Wellness4Washtenaw
Project Theme: Mental Health
Years in Existence: 2
Target Audience and Location: Washtenaw International Middle Academy and Washtenaw International High School (WIMAHI) students in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
Mission: To increase students’ knowledge of and access to mental health resources by strengthening relationships with mental health providers.
Project Description: Founding Scholar Dyuthi Aryasomayajula and educator scholar Dan Giddings created their project to address the impact the global mental health crisis had on students and wanted to create a system to alleviate the high population-to-provider ratio of 187:1. They built a student team that collaborates with the school’s social service team and club leaders to make referrals to staff, encourage peers to reach out for support, and provide monthly workshops for middle schoolers on various mental health topics. This year’s team, led by student Atharv Murthy, is working to engage more students and connect them to pre-existing mental health resources that exist on and off campus while building partnerships with local middle and elementary schools that share similar resources.
Day 28 (formerly Youth for HOPE)
Project Theme: Period Poverty
Years in Existence: 2
Target Audience and Location: Individuals receiving support for homelessness and/or domestic violence in San Bernardino County, California.
Mission: To advocate for and provide access to free period products to individuals lacking menstrual resources in San Bernardino County shelters through community fundraising and donations.
Project Description: Founding Scholar Jessie Lin and educator James Wilson created this project after identifying their passion for women’s health. The team focused on collecting and donating over 3,500 menstrual products to local shelters. As the project and team grew, they chose to change their name to Day 28 as it represented the 28-day length of a menstrual cycle and the importance of day communicating renewal, purpose and hope. This year’s leader Emily Wang is excited to continue donating menstrual products to local shelters while expanding the project’s reach by launching a Day 28 education campaign that destigmatizes period poverty and menstruation. Emily is most proud “that we are able to collect so many products that we are then able to donate to local shelters, alleviating challenges many menstruating people face.”
We are excited to celebrate these student leaders, along with the teams and community members they’ve involved, for the projects they’ve launched and expanded to create lasting change in their communities. Every Scholar-led project is eligible to apply for ongoing funding from the Bezos Family Foundation. Learn more about Community Change Projects.