88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
TAFARI JOHN-KING
ACHIEVEMENT: From his neighborhood in Brooklyn, he could see green.
Living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, N.Y., 18-year-old Tafari John-King could see how an unhealthy environment fostered unhealthy living. Fast-food joints were more plentiful than gleaming groceries with fresh fruits and vegetables, and litter turned streets into trash bins. So Tafari sought to change that.
With Project GreenUp, a school group he founded when he was student president at Medgar Evers College Preparatory School, the teen recruited volunteers to help clean up Crown Heights. The first cleanup happened in October of 2012, and there have been six more since. But the group doesn’t stop with picking up litter. Tafari had greater ambitions for bringing information about healthy, green, sustainable environments to his neighborhood.
With funding from JP Morgan Chase, Project GreenUp put together a green festival. Bringing in speakers, they’ve assisted in soup kitchens and helped with Hurricane Sandy relief. The group also has plans for building a greenhouse on their school roof. Now in his freshman year at Harvard University, Tafari is an adviser to the group he founded as it continues to grow under the student leadership of his high school alma mater.
CATEGORY: Green Innovation
AGE: 18
EDUCATION: Harvard University
HOMETOWN: Brooklyn, N.Y.
SOCIAL MEDIA:
http://www.twitter.com/tafarijk
http://www.twitter.com/marcusbenning1
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/marcus-benning/27/294/3b4
https://twitter.com/UMDChangeAgent
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/lamar-rogers/45/455/a2a
http://www.instagram.com/jetererer
https://twitter.com/_TheeTruth_
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/leslie-turner/70/24a/750
Green Bronx Machine, a not-for-profit corporation in New York City's South Bronx that's harvested more than 30,000 pounds of vegetables, while providing kids with the opportunity to grow healthy food and get a real-life education. What started out as a small project spearheaded by her father, longtime educator Stephen Ritz, now operates 15 indoor and outdoor gardening sites. It's earned praise for the benefits it offers to students involved (they get to hone their math, science and technology skills, as well as enjoy the fruits of their labor) and to their entire community, where the produce makes its way to soup kitchens and farmers markets.
"To see the transformation that these students undergo after working with us and the change in their attitude toward what they can achieve is amazing," Michaela says. She's now maintaining a 3.75 GPA at Skidmore College, where she's studying environmental science and geology, but still has an active role in GBM. She recently taught students how to use a new technology to grow food with only water as a nutrition source. The science-savvy high achiever has her eye on a career that will let her combine her passions for social justice and the environment.
CATEGORY: Green Innovation
AGE: 19
EDUCATION: Skidmore College
HOMETOWN: Bronx, N.Y.
SOCIAL MEDIA:
https://twitter.com/greenBXmachine
Sharpeville and the great Nelson Mandela.”
But this wasn’t simply a matter of a father wanting his son to be socially aware. Jelani said he was born with an urge to help others.
“Ever since I was little, I felt like it was my calling in life to make people happy because I have enjoyment in seeing other people happy,” Jelani said. “Ever since I was little, my mom would say, you were so nice, you’d always go up to the kid who didn’t have much friends and go, ‘I’ll be your friend.’ I still find myself doing stuff like that now. Making someone smile. Stuff like that.”
Along with his work with Toledo Excel, Jelani also works as a mentor to younger students at his school as part of a “Big Brothers” program, and works at a food bank assembling boxes of food for the homeless and needy. Jelani is also part of the all-boys school’s track and field program.
Now looking into colleges, Jelani hopes not stray too far away from home, at a school like Michigan State or University of Kentucky. He’s still deciding what he wants to do, considering both careers in sports management as an agent and psychology.
CATEGORY: Social Activism and Justice
AGE: 16
EDUCATION: St. John’s Jesuit High School
HOMETOWN: Toledo, Ohio
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dedrain-davis/79/3a4/3a3
http://www.twitter.com/Little_Goon
http://www.theroot.com/articles/lists/2014/01/the_2014_young_futurists/james_ward.html
Many more in link
to these brothers and sisters doing good things.