Colorado Springs high schooler selected from teens worldwide for prestigious climate fellowship - KKTV

Colorado Springs high schooler selected from teens worldwide for prestigious climate fellowship

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) - If children are our future, then our future is in great hands with kids like Aryan.

This 14-year-old took a simple school assignment -- and is using it to change the world!

Aryan likes to problem solve -- and he saw a big one needing a solution.

“Even though most people know throwing away trash in a landfill causes some damage to the environment, less than 20 percent of the people were actually taking steps to help prevent that.”

So he put that analytical mind to work!

Aryan applied to the prestigious Climate Leaders Fellowship, an amazing program that brings together the top young minds around not just the country, but the whole world. Aryan was accepted -- and with the age group being 14-18, he was one of the youngest to be so!

He already had the will, and now with the fellowship, he had the way to start fostering change.

Part of the fellowship is designing and implementing a volunteer project aimed at reducing the impact and harms of climate change. Aryan zeroed in on the waste management problem he was seeing around him.

“How this project really started was with my survey. I [gave] a survey about this, and basically, most people are unaware of these kinds of services, like recycling and composting. So they did not really go the extra step to recycle and compost.”

So he started thinking up solutions.

“I did a project called Waste Management Funds, which really intends, or aims, to increase awareness of composting and recycling services here in our city.”

His goal is twofold: education to help more people know these services exist, and fundraising to create more composting and recycling facilities people can take advantage of.

“Funds for like the undersupported or underlacking services here in the city,” he said.

“I was really passionate about climate change, and when I discovered that a main leading cause of climate change was improper waste management, I decided to do this project.”

He started with his classmates at Discovery Canyon High School. With the help of the fellowship, he gave presentations at school -- and like any good Gen-zer, there was a website involved!

“I feel like there was a huge impact. I would go back to the statistics from my website. [ He had a page showing various stats on waste management.] So from that, I was able to impact over 1,000 people from statistics, which really made a difference in everyone’s lives and to help everyone learn more about waste management services.”

He built a QR code to help draw people to the site.

“The QR code really helped; it increased the people coming in, the traffic coming into our website from around 20 people a week to more than 100, which was a huge impact. It also helped us get answers for our surveys. It helped us get answers not just from students but from faculty members and adults and teachers.”

His passion helped inspire many of his classmates and teachers to get involved too!

Aryan didn’t just raise awareness -- he raised funds too! His website helped raise money to go towards supporting additional composting facilities and recycling facilities, Aryan’s ultimate goal.

And watch out word, because Aryan isn’t stopping at Discovery Canyon Campus!

“Right now my target audience was just my school, and I was thinking to make it to the entire city and even more further on later.”

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If your child is interested in applying for the climate fellowship, click here.

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