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The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis is proud to celebrate the 2020 national awardees of the prestigious Power of Children Awards (POCA) established by Deborah Joy Simon Charitable Trust. Through this honor, the museum recognizes and rewards students in grades 6–11 who are improving the lives of others through a selfless commitment to service and the betterment of their local communities and villages and cities around the world.
Friday, November 13, 2020 at 8:30 p.m. EST, visit www.childrensmuseum.org/awards to view the 50-minute event to meet these inspiring students, learn about their impactful projects see videos and hear from two guest speakers who offer inspiring advice for the students and the audience.
- Ashton Gleckman of Carmel, Indiana is a twenty-year-old founder of Blackbird Pictures who began his career as a musician, composer and filmmaker at age six. He directed “We Shall Not Die Now”, a feature-length documentary film with interviews of Holocaust survivors in the US, UK, and Poland. Ashton was inspired by Anne Frank’s story during childhood visits to the Power of Children gallery at The Children’s Museum. He will share thoughts about how we can learn from tragedies in our history.
- Derrick Feldmann, Managing Director of INFLUENCE|SG and Ad Council Edge, is an international speaker, adviser, researcher, author and teacher. A leading expert on cause engagement, today’s social movements and Millennials, his books include The Corporate Social Mind and Social Movements For Good. During the Power of Children Awards, Derrick will offer insight into how young people can be agents of social change. During the virtual program, the awardees will each receive a $2,000 grant to expand their philanthropic projects. When they are ready to make a college selection, they may choose a partial university scholarship from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, the University of Indianapolis, or Butler University in Indianapolis.
The 2020 winners (with grade level in the 2019-2020 school year) are:
Katherine Adams
Grade 8
Hometown: Dallas, Texas
School: Providence Christian School of Texas, Dallas, Texas
Nonprofit organization: Paper For Water
At church, Katherine Adams and her family learned that a child dies every 15 seconds from lack of clean water and that girls are not able to go to school because they spend their days hauling water for their families. This inspired Katherine Adams’ idea to use origami ornaments to raise money for clean water projects. Katherine and her older sister, Isabelle, learned the art of origami from their father.
With the goal of raising $500 at a month-long drive, the girls gave origami ornaments as thank you gifts for donations. Paper For Water (PFW), has raised over $2 million for the drilling of over 200 clean water wells and other hygiene services in the Navajo nation and 20 countries. Katherine has become a sought-after public speaker and the organization hosts nearly 20 origami-folding events a year to support its cause.
Paper For Water is a nonprofit organization that brings clean water to 70,000 people a year and engages over 3,000 volunteers. To learn more visit www.paperforwater.org.
Abhi Desai
Grade 11
Hometown: Phoenix, Arizona
School: Pinnacle High School, Phoenix, Arizona
Nonprofit organization: LexGen
A favorite 7th grade teacher contributed to Abhi Desai’s love of civics. By high school, Abhi was disheartened to see that many fellow students showed very little interest in the role government plays in their lives. An alarming statistic caught his eye. According to the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, only 39% of Americans can pass the U.S. Citizenship Test. Abhi determined that civics education needed an overhaul. He created a nonprofit called LexGen.
Abhi and his board of directors believe that to get and keep kids engaged in civics or history education, making the learning fun as well as informative is key. Games and animated videos keep students engrossed, says Abhi. His nonprofit has expanded into 10 states and reached an estimated 5,000 students. The LexGen website encourages qualified high school students to vote and includes a voter registration link.
To learn more about LexGen, visit www.lexgen.org.
Viraj Jayam
Grade 11
Hometown: Roslyn Heights, New York
School: The Wheatley School, Old Westbury, New York
Program: Helping Hands Long Island
Imagine a child laborer losing a hand in a factory accident. Viraj Jayam was stunned when he visited his native homeland of India and learned this had happened to a friend. Viraj returned to the United States wondering how he could help his friend and millions of others around the world who cannot afford prosthetics. He became captivated with the idea of using 3D printing to create affordable prosthetics.
Viraj’s friend was the first of dozens of recipients to receive a “helping hand.” Viraj witnessed his friend pick up a bottle minutes after receiving his prosthesis. Unfortunately, the technology currently has limitations for creating prostheses for lower limbs, but the young man says he is committed to pursuing solutions. During the peak of the spring 2020 COVID-19 crisis in New York, Helping Hands Long Island pivoted to help frontline workers by creating face shields and hands-free door handles for local hospitals. To learn more about Helping Hands Long Island, visit www.helpinghandslongisland.com.
Benjamin Olshin
Grade 11
Hometown: Portland, Oregon
School: Catlin Gabel School, Portland, Oregon
Program: Babies With Books
Benjamin Olshin is a self-confessed bookworm. He has grown up hearing powerful stories about families’ challenges and heartbreaks during hospitalizations in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) from his neonatologist mother. He became determined to combine his passion for books with his desire to help NICU families. He founded the Babies With Books program after learning that reading is especially important for NICU babies, who are at increased risk of poor developmental outcomes due to medical complications, family separation and socioeconomic stressors.
Babies With Books provides a choice of books in 18 languages to NICU families. Benjamin says more than 700 families have been served. A survey of those families showed that while 40% of families did not read with their baby before receiving their books, 100% read to their infants after receiving their welcome packet. To learn more about Babies With Books, visit www.babieswithbooks.org.
Jahin Rahman
Grade 11
Hometown: New York, New York
School: Academy of American Studies, New York, New York
Program: Efforts in Youth Development of Bangladesh (EYDB)
Jahin Rahman positively affects the lives of thousands of street children in the slums of Bangladesh. Twenty-five men chased and threw rocks at third-grader Jahin and her friends during a violent political protest in her native country before her family immigrated to the United States. Molded by the dangerous experience, Jahin dedicated herself to creating change.
Jahin leads more than 300 volunteers from Dhaka, Bangladesh and across the U.S. and seven countries to raise money, oversee building, and run programs for libraries, a school, a day care center for garment factory workers, computer labs, bathrooms for girls in rural schools, a drug rehabilitation center and a stipend-based educational program for child servants. In 2020, Jahin and her cadre of student volunteers quickly changed direction to temporarily direct donations to provide rations for residents of slums affected by COVID-19. For more information about EYDB, visit www.eydborganization.wixsite.com/eydb.
Samyak Shrimali
Grade 9
Hometown: Portland, Oregon
School: Jesuit High School, Portland, Oregon
Project: Sanjeevani: A Novel Automated System for Hospital-Acquired Infection Prevention
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates about 1.7 million people contract hospital-acquired infections every year. Samyak Shrimali’s mother was one of them. She survived; but according to the CDC in its 2015 survey, approximately 72,000 people in acute care hospitals in the U.S. did not. Stunned to learn this, Samyak began researching the cause of these infections and a possible solution. Poor hand hygiene by hospital staff is a leading cause, he discovered. With mentoring from 3M corporate scientist Dr. Mahfuza Ali, Samyak developed a complex, fully automated, real-time software program that alerts staff when proper hygiene is not followed. The prototype earned the young entrepreneur the title of one of America’s Top 10 Young Scientists in the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge.
*2019 Power of Children awardee Jahkil Jackson was recently selected by Redbook Magazine and MSN.com as one of the 40 most incredible kids who has changed our world. Jahkil began addressing homelessness at the age of five. He has created what he calls “Blessing Bags” of hygiene products tens of thousands of people around the globe. Anne Frank, featured in The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis’ Power of Children gallery, is also one of Redbook/MSN’s highlighted children along with Malala Yousafzai. The Pakistani young woman who advocates for women pursuing education, was shot by the Taliban for her activism. She becomes the fourth child included in the Power of Children gallery in September 2021. To learn more about all 40 children, click on https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/family/these-40-incredible-kids-have-forever-changed-our-world/ss-BB19RDge?ocid=se
*Speaking of Jahkil Jackson, he will be a panelist alongside this year’s awardees in the museum’s annual Symposium the day following the awards ceremony. The virtual Symposium 2020: “Equipping Youth for Service and Social Action” is a half-day, skill-building, interactive event for young people in grades 8-12 who care about service. It will be held on Zoom on Saturday, November 14, 1–5 pm EST / 12 pm CST / 11 a.m. MST / 10 a.m. PST. To receive log-in information to attend the free symposium, youth must REGISTER before Tuesday, November 10 at www.childrensmuseum.org/symposium. Sessions will be facilitated by students of the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Power of Children Awardees, youth service field experts, and staff of The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. Social cause researcher, Derrick Feldmann will offer insight into how young people can support social change.
The Power of Children Awards are established by Deborah Joy Simon Charitable Trust and the 2020 awards are supported by State Auto Insurance Companies.
About The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis
The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis is a nonprofit institution committed to creating extraordinary family learning experiences across the arts, sciences, and humanities that have the power to transform the lives of children and families. For more information about the tourist attraction and museum, please visit www.childrensmuseum.org, follow us on Twitter @TCMIndy, Facebook.com/childrensmuseum and YouTube.com/IndyTCM.
The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis is proud to partner with Riley Children’s at Indiana University Health, Old National Bank and Ice Miller LLP.
