Top 10: Influential Teens of 2016

Here is a list of the Top 10 influential teenagers of 2016

10) Kelvin Doe 

Kelvin Doe was born 26 October 1996 in Freetown, where he is also known as DJ Focus. He is a Sierra Leonean engineer. He is known for teaching himself engineering at the age of 13 and for building his own radio station in Sierra Leone, where he plays music and broadcasts news under the name "DJ Focus."

Kelvin Doe was born to a single mother when Sierra Leone was being torn apart due to the ongoing civil war. "Her resilience and self-belief made it possible for me to be alive today," he once said, with respect to his mother. 
Doe was a speaker at TED x Teen and lectured to undergraduate engineering students at Harvard College In May 2013!

9) Zea Tongeman

A 14-year-old from south London, designed the social media app called “Jazzy Recycling” that turns waste disposal into a game. Jazzy Recycling helps users find places to recycle, tells them what they can recycle and then enables them to scan, share and get rewards for their efforts.
Tongeman was inspired to create her mobile app after attending a workshop with Little Miss Geek at her school, St.Saviours and St.Olaves in Elephant and Castle, England. The presentation had brought fashion designer Francesca Rosella to teach students basic computer coding and circuitry for clothing. Soon after, she entered Apps for Good that is  a competition that encourages students to create positive change through technology. 

Teaming up with her friend, Jordan Stirbu, she laid the foundations for Jazzy Recycling.

8) Jack Thomas Andraka 

Jack Thomas Andraka was born January 8, 1997. He is an American inventor, scientist and cancer researcher. He is known for his award-winning work on a potential method for detecting the early stages of pancreatic and other cancers, which he performed while he was a high school student , at an age where students are still figuring out their career options . Andraka enrolled as a freshman at Stanford University for the 2015-2016 academic year.
Andraka claims to have invented a new type of sensor, similar to those of diabetic test strips, for early-stage pancreatic cancer screening. This paper sensor measures the level of mesothelin (a suspected cancer biomarker) in a sample to test for the presence of cancer in a patient.

7) Jaden Smith

Jaden Christopher Syre Smith , born on July 8, 1998, is an American actor and rapper. He is the son of Jada Pinkett Smith and the well known actor Will Smith.
Sure, Will Smith’s son got the most attention for telling the New York Times that “school is not authentic because it ends,” for example, or tweeting “Kanye For President” to his 5.7 million followers, but he is also making waves in the music industry.  

6) Joshua Wong

Joshua Wong Chi-fung , born on 13 October 1996 is a student activist from Hong Kong and founder of the student activist group known as Scholarism. He is also the secretary general of Demosistō, a political party. currently studying at the Open University of Hong Kong. In June 2014, Scholarism drafted a plan to reform Hong Kong's electoral system to push for universal suffrage. 

Wong was charged on 27 November 2014 with obstructing a bailiff clearing one of Hong Kong's three protest areas , during the umbrella movement. His lawyer described the charge to be politically motivated. He was banned from entering a large part of the city. He was also not allowed to use a large number of roads, even for transit purposes.

5) Ahmed Mohamed

Not everyone makes national news by just bringing a science project to school, but the 9th grader’s arrest spun of a national debate over racial profiling.
The Ahmed Mohamed clock incident took place in 2015. He was arrested for bringing an alleged bomb to the school. He had made a clock resembling an electronic clock using a pencil box. His English teacher who thought it was a bomb, confiscated the clock, and reported him to the principal. The principal called in Local law enforcement who questioned him for an hour and a half and sent him to a juvenile detention facility. Even after his release by the juvenile justice authorities’, he was suspended from school. 

This news went viral on social media, and even president Obama responded to it by tweeting that Ahmed’s clock was cool and also invited him to the white house.
In October 2015, the family decided to move to Qatar, where Ahmed plans to continue his education with the help of a scholarship from the Qatar education foundation.

4) Flynn McGarry

Flynn McGarry, born November 1998 is an American , New York city based chef . When children of his age were still figuring out how to complete their homework or finish math problems , Flynn had started the US$160-a-head Eureka dining club in Los Angeles, at the age of 12. He flew to New York city after completing his high school and started his own restaurant namely Eureka NYC. This year , in 2016, he presented one of his dishes in the eight season of Masterchef Australia , as a pressure test.

3) Moziah Bridges (CEO of Mo's Bows)

Moziah Bridges started his business when he was 9 years old. While his classmates were doing homework and playing sports, Moziah sold over $200,000 worth of products. The teenager had the idea for Mo's Bows when his grandmother, who was a retired seamstress, explained the importance of "dressing sharp" to him. Motivated to make something of his early formed passion, he requested his grandmother to teach him to sew, after which eventually developed the talent of creating bow ties.

2) Kathleen Genevieve Ledecky 

Kathleen Genevieve Ledecky was born March 17, 1997 .She is an American swimmer who holds a substantial number of world records in the 400, 800, and 1,500-meter freestyle and the fastest-ever times in the 500 and 1,650-yard freestyles. At the age of 15 , she took part in the 2012 summer Olympics. Ledecky has a massive ten world records , and in her final individual event at this year’s 2016 Summer Olympics, the 800-meter freestyle, Ledecky qualified first in the heats with a time of 8:12:86  setting an Olympic record. Her total of ten individual titles won at the three Olympic and seven World Aquatics Championships are a record for female swimmers across the globe.

1)Malala Yousafzai

The name that needs no introduction, Malala was born on 12 July 1997 in the Swat District of Pakistan.  At the age of 15, Malala was shot in the face by the Taliban, for raising awareness reguarding female education after which she became the voice of more than sixty thousand girls who were deprived of education, not only in Pakistan , but round the world. Malala Yousafzai is the youngest recipient of the Nobel peace prize which she received at the age of 17. She currently lives with her parents and two brothers in Birmingham, United Kingdom.

(Read her full article here)

On a concluding note, we at Veritas believe that motivation to do something , comes from within. The fire and the willingness to change the world is something only you can build, may it be with the extremely talented engineer Kelvin Doe, or the human rights activist Malala Yousafzai. Both had a dream of making a world a better place, and they continue to thrive to live up to that dream.

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