2021 High School Winners

Crystalia Evelyn Liaw is a 9^th grade student at Sinarmas World Academy in Tangerang, Indonesia, outside of Jakarta, where she was born and raised. She found out about the contest toward the end of 2020 as a part of the Service as Action activity her school sponsors to encourage students to contribute to the society.

Initially, Crystalia Evelyn was not very interested in the Re-Imagining Industrial Systems topic, given that her interests are more in the realm of biological science (she describes herself as “completely fascinated by our body mechanisms”). She admits that thinking about large global problems was a little overwhelming and that she tried to focus and ask herself, “what is the core problem that needs to be solved?” She soon began to think about industries as Earth’s bodily mechanisms. She realized that it is critical to re-imagine industrial systems since everything we use comes from industries. It was this realization that inspired her to take a deep dive into a new topic and spread what she learned by creating a video.

Crystalia Evelyn shared that as a “dystopian fiction lover” she was aware of population growth and related challenges and that “I often let my mind wonder what the world would be like when our Earth finally reaches its limit and when we, humans, finally feel a sense of emergency to make a change. Would it be too late by then?” She told us that is not an option if she wants to live in the world she’s imagined for herself and that this was further inspiration to submit a video. She didn’t have to look far for the focus of her video “I simply look around me. Indonesia is a beautiful country with so many hidden treasures and a few of them are found underground.” Specifically, her inspiration came from a trip to Bangka Belitung, where she learned that the island produces 90% of Indonesia’s tin, or as it is referred to there, “death metal,” due to the high death rate associated with mining it.

Crystalia Evelyn is relatively new to filmmaking, though she has prior experience creating a 5-minute video for an international science video competition for which she won a merit award. She shared that before that project, “I had zero knowledge of filmmaking and editing.” Aside from having to learn about industrial systems, the biggest challenge for her was editing. “During that time, I would watch lots of video editing tutorials just to understand and incorporate interesting elements into my video.” She advises future contest participants to use their time well, noting that, “scheduling your time so that you have enough time to fully research, create an impactful script, film, and edit is extremely crucial if you want the product to excel.” Crystalia Evelyn is interested in seeing topics on Mental Health and Ocean and Marine Life in future contests because she believes it would be beneficial to open dialogue on these topics to dispel prejudices and to bring to light issues that are “out of sight and out of mind.” She plans to save most of her prize earnings for her future education and would like to set some aside for “helping

kids in villages through donating them school supplies or providing them with things that would make their day a little bit better.”

She is involved in several school extracurricular activities including, debate, Bio2m (Synthetic Biology/Bioengineering), Riveria (Teaching English to local schools), 1take (her school’s dance team) and Timbre (her school’s theater club). She shared that she loves food, particularly carbs, “One time, I was in Japan and ate 10 ramen in a span of a week!” Crystalia Evelyn is inspired by her friends, Sherry and Gisela, whom she also thanks for getting her through the video editing process. “I’m so grateful to have such amazing, educated, intelligent friends which enables me to have honest and open conversations about real-world problems.”