2019 Middle School Winners

Vedika Amin is a seventh grader at Oberoi International School in Mumbai, India. Vedika’s love of art and interest in global issues led her to the World of 7 Billion contest, where she was immediately drawn to the Protecting Human Rights category. Population growth has been a common topic in her humanities classes over the years, most recently through an examination connecting population growth to food insecurity. As a member of her school’s Model UN team, she has developed a particular interest in refugees, and is especially interested in understanding conflict from a humanitarian perspective. As Vedika says, “it’s the people involved who really matter.”

Though Vedika has made videos for school assignments in the past, her World of 7 Billion entry helped her explore new kinds of filmmaking techniques. By far the most difficult part of the process was figuring out how to condense all of the things she wanted to say into one minute, but Vedika is happy that her video ended up being concise and to the point. She advises future World of 7 Billion entrants to keep track of their sources and write their citations as they work rather than waiting for the end, and to be careful and make sure you don’t plagiarize anything.

Swimming is one of Vedika’s biggest passions. She has competed at nationals in India multiple times and she considers swimming to be one of the things that has taught her the most, saying that “through swimming, I have learned that working hard at something you care about will bring you success.” Vedika has also won essay contests and raised money through swim-a-thons. Though she doesn’t know what she’s going to do with her prize money just yet, she hopes that maybe one day she can save up enough money to buy a Lamborghini.