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18 teenagers honored by Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania

18 teenagers honored by Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania
18 teenagers honored by Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania 02:33

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — When kids put their minds to it, they can do amazing things, and 18 young people from around the region are being honored for what they're doing to help others at the Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania's 18 Under Eighteen Reception at Acrisure Stadium on Monday.

One of the honorees is Khadicha Kosimjonova, a senior at Baldwin High School who founded a nonprofit called STEM Seeds. She and a team of 50 volunteers perform free hands-on science experiments for young people in mostly low-income and marginalized communities.

She explains the kids' favorite demonstration: "We'll teach very basic chemistry concepts to students using slime. So we'll give them the glue, and we'll give them the borax solution, and they do the demonstration themselves. But we kind of teach them the concepts behind it. So why does slime come together when glue and borax are mixed together? It's because of the atoms starting to bond."

She also started a club at her school called S.A.F.E. Club which stands for Sisterhood, Affection, Freedom and Equity.

"It was a woman empowerment club that I first started at my high school, where local women leaders in STEM would come in and talk about their STEM careers to the girls at Baldwin High School, and this actually expanded to 16 chapters worldwide," she said.

Sagar Raghavan, another Junior Achievement of Western PA 18 Under Eighteen honoree, is a junior at North Allegheny Senior High School and founded a non-profit called Futr, pronounced "future". Sager took it upon himself to learn about finances, investing and taxes, but it was a revelation about his parents, who are from India, that inspired him to create an online tax calculator and financial information tailored to immigrants.

"That's what really drove me to start this, because I really understood, 'wow, my parents don't know as much as I do,' which was interesting because they've always known more than I do, or they should, but in this specific spot, they didn't. And it's because of their immigrant nature," he explained. 

Sager's working on partnering with 80 organizations around the country that work with immigrants to use his website Futr, and he's enhancing the tax calculator using AI.

You can learn about all amazing 18 young people from around the region, as well as more about what Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania does, here. And for opportunities for young people in the Pittsburgh region to achieve their dreams, check out Kidsburgh's website here.

KDKA is proud to partner with kidsburg.org.

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