Introduction
My name is Sarah and I am leading the second High School HeroesX challenge, set in Beijing China! I have worked with Eli Wachs, the Founder of HSHX, to create this challenge to provide youth in my home city a platform to innovatively solve local issues. I graduated from Beijing National Day School, and am currently attending a high school in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I have always believed that Chinese students need to focus on getting to know the world and be able to contribute to their society rather than spending all their time studying. Thus, when I was younger, I founded Pineapple Youth, an organization which strove to help students plan their future and get internship opportunities. When I came across an article about High School HeroesX on WeChat, a Chinese social media network, I knew this was an organization I wanted to work with to see my dreams of a creatively thinking and problem solving youth in Beijing, and all of China, be fostered and hopefully, with some help, come to fruition.
The Problem
This challenge is designed to empower students in Beijing to research local issues, collectively select one of those issues and the breakthroughs needed to fix it, and then, with some help, find an innovative solution to it. As seen in the first High School HeroesX challenge in Philadelphia, the possibilities for challenge ideas are close to limitless. We look forward to presenting to the world the many ideas our students generate, and ultimately, the idea chosen for the challenge.
The Challenge Breakthrough
The challenge hopes to link the brightest high school minds of Beijing with its greatest challenges. Consistent with the High School HeroesX philosophy that one is never too young to change the world, the challenge hopes to give youth a platform to delve into research on contemporary issues in Beijing before attempting to solve one of them.
Additional rules
Who can participate:
Any passionate student in the Beijing area is welcomed to join this project. So far students from from six high schools in Beijing have begun working on the challenge! These include Beijing National Day School, No. 101 High school, The High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China, Yongding Street High School, Bayi High School, and Huijia private School. With that said, if you are not a student or a resident of Beijing, please contact us as we are sure we can find ways for anyone to help this challenge.
Selection of Winner:
Before a winner can be selected, our challenge must be decided on first. Like the first High School HeroesX challenge, we plan on having a challenge design workshop to allow students a platform to collectively decide on the challenge they would most like to work on solving in their community. At the event, students will champion the challenges they feel most passionate about while they deliberate over which of the many ideas they had come up with, from the environment to traffick to sanitation, they would most like to solve. In the process, they will also decide upon the eventual selection criterium for the winner based on the metrics they decide on at the event.
Registration and Submissions:
Only students from the Beijing area may attempt to “win” this challenge, however we hope members of the community support our students in any ways possible, whether it be by serving on our advisory board to lend knowledge on the specific topic chosen or through participating in our challenge design workshop, highlighting to students what the most pressing issues are in the community and which ones students have the best ability to solve. For now, submissions may be anything from any field that is able to bring impact to the society. Students should be able to voice their ideas no matter how bold they may seem. With that said, at our challenge design workshop we will make sure to evaluate which challenges are most likely to result in great student produced change. This likely will mean that the challenge picked will not need millions of dollars of initial funding to solve, nor a PHD in astrophysics.
Timeline
The timeline of this challenge will be updated frequently throughout and is subject to change. For now, students in Beijing will research local issues from April of 2015 through May of 2015. In June, the challenge design workshop will be held and the timeline from then on will be decided upon.
