Discus Awards

My passion for service and helping others began when I was diagnosed with an under-jaw bite when I was starting middle school. Doctors projected that I would have major problems speaking and eating if it was not corrected by a costly surgery. Thankfully, I eventually had my under-jaw bite fixed.

But for all this time, I thought about all the kids who had the same difficulties as I did and those who could not even afford treatment. Soon I decided to join in the

Smile Train‘s mission to help raise funds for life-changing cleft-lip surgery for underprivileged children around the world. Funding 60 cleft surgeries and treatments for children around the world, we were able to provide each surgery for less than $250! After countless fundraisers and events, I had seen the power of youth to change the world.

Kids Change the World was founded in 2007 to improve the lives of children by mobilizing the caring power of youth to advance the common good. Since then, we have offered hundreds of youth-led ideas, groups, and charitable initiatives with action tools: website domains, mentors, and grassroots services. You, too, can even use our free action tools for your own community initiatives by getting started here.

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Filed under: Christopher Yao • All-Around High School Students • Meet the Winner

The basis of my idea for a charity program started when one day, my mom was talking to me and said that my grandmother had glaucoma, an incurable disease that gradually closes in on the vision and slowly drives the victim to a devastating state of blindness. That very summer, I got glasses, due to slight power in both of my eyes. I had always had 20/20 vision, but suddenly, my eyesight deteriorated, and I became the first one in my family (at the age of 14) to get glasses. Afterwards, I thought about my aunt on my dad's side. When she was about seven or eight years old, she lost one of her eyes to an infection. My grandparents had neither the money nor the resources to go to an optometrist to save their daughter's eye. She had to have an operation, and her entire eye was taken out. Now, she has power in her remaining eye. Then it came to me. What about all those other adults and children in poverty-stricken areas of the world that do not have the financial support to get a needed eye operation? I suddenly felt the strong need to do something about it. The worst thing I could do was nothing.

In June of 2011, I got started. First, I put up a website to inform the public about the program which I named “Small Acts of Kindness". Next, I found my organization, which was Sankara Nethralaya, a non-profit organization situated in the USA. They collect money from any patrons and send it on over to Chennai, India, to supply poverty-stricken people with free eye operations. Then, I put together a group of 72 children, hence "Small" Acts of Kindness, to show India that people around the world have not forgotten their culture and that WE CARE.

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Filed under: Shruthi Prabhu • All-Around High School Students • Meet the Winner