DoSomething.org and BIC 4 GOOD are supporting amazing young people taking action in their own communities! These grants went to established programs and organizations that have a large impact, proven sustainability, and measurable success. Check out our winners here!

$5,000 Grand Prize Winner

Elizabeth McCracken, 16

Step Up Cincinnati
Cincinnati has a homeless, hungry, and needy population to address – and many of the not-for-profits providing important services to such populations in the community are in need of additional manpower. Elizabeth with the Step Up Cincinnati project, responds to the volunteer needs of these other not-for-profits by engaging hundreds of students in a community wide service activity. Previously this huge day of service contributed over 450 student volunteers with 4 hours of action, and this year they hope to grow to 1,000 students. Elizabeth will use her grant money to increase the size of Step Up Cincinnati to include all area high schools for the largest (and growing) youth service event in the city!

$2,000 Grant Winners

Adam Blair, 22

Buffalo Car Share
Buffalo, the third poorest city in the U.S., is faced with severe levels of poverty and unusually low rates of automobile ownership. Inspired by these statistics, Adam started an organization for residents of Buffalo, NY to reserve vehicles by the hour for short trips and errands. Buffalo CarShare provides cars to low- to moderate-income households in need of transportation to doctors’ appointments, job interviews, recreation, family and child care visits/transport, and opportunities for civic engagement. Adam's grant money will go towards the costs of new promotional and marketing materials as well as towards making systematic improvements and expansion.

Stevie Peacock, 16

Project KINDNESS
Stevie created Project KINDNESS, an organization that collects donations of school supplies for financially and developmentally challenged children in Arcadia, FL. In the past several years, Project KINDNESS has delivered holiday gifts for over 950 elementary school students, school supplies for 200 incoming kindergarteners, presents for more than 3,000 patients in Children’s Hospitals, and every year the project grows to include more schools and more students. This year's initiative will focus on delivering school supplies, a Halloween party, and holiday gifts. Stevie will use her grant money to contribute to the purchase and donation of school supplies for her program.

Ben Hirschfeld, 16

Lit!
In Nairobi’s Kibera slum, education is hindered by lack of electric light. Currently, Kerosene lamps are the major sources of light but they are costly, dim, release a ton of global-warming CO2 gas every year, and cause numerous health hazards. Ben found a solution. At age 15 he founded Lit!, an organization that donates and distributes solar lanterns to schools. Solar lanterns are safe, emission-free, four times brighter, and need no costly fuel. Ben follows a unique business model that makes his project sustainable: along with donations, Ben finances lantern purchases through users’ savings on kerosene. His grant will go towards the purchase of 30 student solar lanterns and take a significant step toward expanding his project to another school.

Rebecca Kantar, 18

Minga
Rebecca was called to action by a world where "pimpin" is synonymous with "cool," young girls are sexualized in the media, and two million children are trafficked and prostituted every year. Minga was created by a group of teens whose goal was to educate their peers about the global child sex trade, and thereby help to shift attitudes. Minga’s Let's Get Real Campaign: Speaking and Outreach Tour send Minga-ites across the country to lead talks to schools, youth clubs, and camps about child sex trafficking with the goal of inspiring 2 million young people. The grant money will go towards the costs of the speaking engagement as well as individual Minga club costs.

Anna Heacock, 19

Building Haiti
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere with 80 percent of the population living in abject poverty, unemployment rates of over 60 percent, and a literacy rate is just above 50 percent. Along with Building Haiti, Anna is working for the long-term sustainability of the country through the implementation of education. Partnering with the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture and Foundation Unibank, Building Haiti is constructing 14-room modular schoolhouses that will accommodate two pre-school grades through ninth grade. Anna will use her BIC 4 Good grant money to build a classroom that will educate 30 Haitian students.

Sarah Geller, 23

Arts Education International
Sarah was first inspired to take action after she traveled to Trinidad as a student to study steel drums and began working at an orphanage. Through this experience, she began to understand how expressive arts as therapy could be to help these children make huge strides in recovering from the devastating emotional impact of abandonment and the crime-ridden, impoverished reality of their lives. Sarah is now the Executive Director of Arts Education International, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to rehabilitating and empowering orphaned and abandoned children through sustainable community-based arts programs in West Africa. In Sierra Leone, they serve a population of 10 former child soldiers who endured a horrendous 11-year civil war during which they were forced into combat or sexual slavery and endured unimaginable conditions of violence and neglect. In the three and a half years since incorporating Sarah has provided sustainable, community-based arts programs for 350 children, employing 50 indigenous artists, musicians, dancers and dramatists. She hopes to extend her programs to the Northern and Southern regions of Sierra Leone, and to the Volta region of Ghana.

Frankie Guzman, 18

Paint not Prison
After being arrested for graffiti charges, Frankie joined Arts for Action and started the initiative Paint not Prison. The goal of this program is to nurture a youth based, arts-focused movement by providing training, infrastructure and resources for artistic expression. Paint Not Prison is a mural education and beautification project to engage youth and artists in bi-weekly mural and leadership classes. Frankie's grant money will go towards art supply costs as well as more in-depth marketing materials to expand the outreach of his organization and accommodate more youth leaders.

Shira Shane, 22

HIV Peer Educator Project
Of Tanzanians aged 15-19 years, less than 40% have a comprehensive knowledge of HIV and the level of knowledge about HIV is even lower in rural areas. Shira started the Peer Educator Program to combat this reality, where young Tanzanian leaders use music, drama, raps, debates and many other creative ways to convey their message about HIV to peers in their communities. Shira and her organization currently oversee 18 active clubs in 18 villages of northern Tanzania, with over 280 students serving as peer educators for their communities. Shira's grant money will go towards club materials as the number of clubs and youth involved per club expands.

Alex Epstein, 19

NY2NO
Alex started NY2NO to combat food injustice, unemployment, vacant land, and an underdeveloped educational system. Alex works to create integration by bringing high school youth from NYC and Philadelphia to the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans. While in New Orleans, the teens work with local New Orleans teens to convert vacant land into community run urban farms serving as education and community centers. Alex and his organization have led 40 trips for over 1,100 students. He will use his grant money for the development of the urban farm in Philadelphia, and for other program materials.

Ashley Shuyler, 25

AfricAid: The Kisa Project
Ashley formed AfricAid in 2001 when she was 16 years old to provide educational opportunities to girls in Tanzania. The benefits of girls’ education are well-documented: educated girls are one-third less likely to contract HIV/AIDS; the children of African mothers with five years of education have a 40% better chance of living to age five; and each year of secondary school boosts girls’ wages by 20-25 percent. The Kisa Project is a new AfricAid initiative that uniquely combines girls’ scholarships with leadership training, mentoring and post-graduate support in order to support a new generation of women leaders in Africa – and the communities in which they live. The grant will be used by AfricAid to fund the installation of a computer lab at a new Kisa Project partner school in early 2011 – and therefore take the entire Kisa program to a new partner school.