2021 High School Winners

Grace Kaneshiro is a 10^th grader at the International School of Indiana. Grace found out about the contest from her biology class where her teacher gave it as an assignment. Of the three topics, Grace chose to submit a video for Strengthening Global Health because she discussed it in depth in her class and wanted to learn more about the topic. She drew inspiration for her video from reading “Spillover”, a book by David Quammen in which he discusses how pathogens (most likely a virus) will spillover from non-human species into humans. “A lot of scientists and mathematicians are asking what the next big virus will be and what are the methods to indicate where they’re coming from”, Grace shared. She used her video to further explore these questions. Prior to submitting her video, Grace had limited knowledge about the impact of population growth on the earth. She knew that the population was increasing and that it had a negative impact on global health but doing research for the World of 7 Billion contest allowed her to learn more.

Grace has experience creating videos for her other classes, particularly in her design class where she had to present on various topics and different products. The hardest part of the video making process for Grace was conducting research on her topic. Referring to the language of the readings, Grace reflected on her experience noting how, “it can be hard for a high school student to understand, so I had to look up a lot of words to get them.” This isn’t Grace’s first award, and she has won a cash prize award for an art piece she submitted to a local arts center. For future contest participants, she advises that they pick a topic they are really interested in to help stay motivated while creating the video.

In her free time, Grace likes to swim and does it as a sport at school. She is interested in art and she loves a good book. She also works with students in her local area advocating for climate change. One of their most notable achievements is that they successfully declared a climate emergency in their state.