Miles Louison, Age 11

Miles Louison, Candy Sushi Kid

Not too many kids start their own companies at age seven, but for Miles Louison, the idea
came from an interest in cooking.

“I was browsing through my mom’s Rachel Ray cookbook and saw this recipe for candy
sushi,” Miles says. “I asked my mom if we could try making it and we liked it a
lot. So, then I asked her if we could make it into a business.”

Miles worked on his own recipe to make sweet treats that look like sushi, a Japanese food
made of rice and raw fish or other seafood. All of Miles’s products have a rice  krispie treat base (puffed rice cereal, marshmallows, and butter) made to look  like the rice part of sushi rolls. His Gumi Furuti “ikura” roll, for example,  has chopped up gummy worms and red licorice on the inside and is wrapped in a  band of fruit leather.

When Miles first got started, he made flyers for his company—which he called The Dessert Company—and his aunt helped him build a simple one-page website. He sold his sushi-shaped desserts to mostly friends and family, but before long, others in
his town heard about his tasty treats. A newspaper article and TV news story about him caused a lot of new orders to come in—and before Miles knew it, he was in business.

In 2011—at the age of 10—Miles attended Startup Weekend in Denver, a program for entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas and receive feedback and help. He was the youngest entrepreneur to attend the weekend, and impressed everyone so much that he won the entire competition.

The experience helped him think about how to grow his business and put him in touch with other business people—all of whom had much more experience and were happy to offer Miles their advice. “It was really cool,” he says. “Everyone there liked my business and they were all excited to try to help me make connections that would help me.”

Since winning Startup Weekend, Miles changed his company name to Sushimee, launched a new website, and got a new logo. He makes all of his own products, working in a
commercial kitchen not far from his home. Sushimee treats are available online
and in two candy stores in the Denver area. Miles is hard at work to get into
other stores, too.

Now 11 years old, Miles spends several hours a week on his business and heads into
the commercial kitchen every few weeks to make more desserts as orders come in.
One day, he hopes to become an S&P 500 company with products available in  stores in every state.

Miles has earned several awards for his hard work and unique product, including the Young Americans Center for Financial Education Celebration for Young Entrepreneurs Award in 2011 (he was a finalist in 2010 and 2009), the 2011 Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award from Minority Enterprise Development Week, and the Colorado Black Chamber of Commerce Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. In June 2012, he competed on Nickelodeon’s Figure it Out game show, which has kid contestants compete against Nick celebrities.

Miles at Young Entrepreneurs Celebration

He’s certainly learned several lessons about what it takes to run a business, hard work, and giving back to his community (he donates some of his sales to Project C.U.R.E., a nonprofit that delivers medical supplies to doctors caring for patients in developing countries). But Miles says being the president of Sushimee is also pretty fun. “I like selling my product and talking to people.”

Learn more about Sushimee and Miles at http://sushimee.com/.

Max Wallack, Age 16

Max Wallack, Puzzleraiser

When Max Wallack’s great grandmother began to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease—which affects the brain and causes loss of memory and thinking skills—it had a big impact on him. “She and I were particularly close,” says Max. “Alzheimer’s caused her to become a fearful and paranoid person. She wasn’t a very trusting person throughout her life, but she seemed to trust me.”

Sometimes Max’s great grandmother had to live in a dementia unit in a hospital. Spending time with her there was the first time Max noticed Alzheimer’s patients working on puzzles. “When I visited her, I noticed that the patients who were working on puzzles seemed calmer and happier,” Max recalls. After his 

Max delivering puzzles to the Alzheimer’s unit at McLean Hospital

great grandma passed away—she was living in the dementia unit the last few months of her life—Max started collecting puzzles and distributing them to nursing facilities with Alzheimer’s units in the Boston area.

That was the beginning of Puzzles To Remember.

Max was only 12 years old in 2008 when he started the organization, setting up collection bins in schools and libraries in his town. He collected more than a thousand puzzles, and he delivered all of them to Alzheimer’s units nearby. But Max quickly realized he wanted to reach beyond his local area. He applied for 501(c)3 status so he could accept tax-deductible donations, and he started working to develop relationships with facilities around the country where more people could donate puzzles.

Max also contacted a puzzle manufacturer, Springbok Puzzles, because he had learned that the best type of puzzles for Alzheimer’s patients were those with low piece count, larger pieces, and peaceful images. The president of Springbok agreed to help and in 2010, Springbok’s PuzzlesToRemember series hit the shelves.

Max just turned 16 and he is still very involved in Puzzles To Remember, spending at least 10 hours a week on answering emails, setting up new donation locations across the country, and applying for federal grants. To date, Puzzles To Remember has supplied puzzles to 1,300 facilities in North America.

In 2009, Max was named a Huggable Hero by Build-a-Bear Workshop, and received a $2,500 check that he could give to the nonprofit of his choice. Unsurprisingly, he selected the Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Boston University, and even delivered the check personally. One of the lead researchers there invited him to volunteer doing clerical work. Along the way he met the Medical Center’s geriatric psychiatrist, and became a research intern in 2011.

Max researches early identifiers of Alzheimer’s disease alongside leading Alzheimer’s researchers. It’s a prestigious position, but Max says he has simply followed his passions. “I definitely want to be a geriatric psychiatrist,” he says. “I want to have patient contact and continue to do research. I have decided I will devote my life to helping Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers.”

Along with his beloved Great Grams, Max says he is inspired by Jan Davidson, founder of the Davidson Institute, which he attended when he was five years old. “I remember Jan telling me that anyone who had the ability to help another person had the responsibility to do so,” he says. “I’ve accepted those words as my mantra.”

Stay tuned for a Q&A with Max Wallack, coming later this month. While Max keeps quite busy with school—he’s a college student at Boston University—his research, and running Puzzles To Remember, he also happens to be an impressive inventor. In 2003, he even won first place in the Craftsman/NSTA Young Inventor Contest for his Great Granny Booster Step, which he created for his Great Grams. He has gone on to win several other national invention contests since then.

You’ll learn all about it soon!

To learn more about Puzzles To Remember, visit www.puzzlestoremember.org.

Emily Zauzmer, Age 15

Emily Zauzmer: Singer for a Cause

Her whole life, Emily Zauzmer has been allergic to berries, nuts, sesame, kiwi and a lot of other foods. “It’s something I’ve dealt with since childhood,” says Emily. “Nobody in my family has food allergies, so it’s been a learning experience.”

Emily carries an EpiPen with her everywhere she goes. An EpiPen is used to inject epinephrine, which helps treat allergic emergencies such as hives, life-threatening breathing problems and sudden drops in blood pressure. “I’ve had a lot of scary situations, but I’ve never needed to use it, thankfully,” Emily says. “Unfortunately, my food allergies are not something I’ll outgrow. This will probably stay with me until there is a cure.”

That fact is what led Emily to get involved in supporting food allergy research when she was 11 years old. For her bat mitzvah, the Jewish “coming-of-age” celebration for 13-year-old girls, Emily took on an independent project to help her community. She decided to combine her love of singing and graphic arts with her passion for helping cure food allergies to found EZgreetings in 2008.

Emily and Dr. Robert Wood

Through her EZgreetings website—which she designed herself—Emily sells singing grams for $5 each and donates 100% of the money to food allergy research. She reached out to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America to find the best researcher to whom she could send her money and was put in touch with Dr. Robert Wood, a professor of pediatrics and chief of pediatric allergy and immunology at Johns Hopkins University. He is a well-known researcher of all kinds of food allergies among children, including peanut, egg, milk, and other allergies. To date, she has raised more than $5,000 for Dr. Wood’s research.

When she created EZgreetings, Emily recorded 100 singing grams that can be sent to family members, friends, or anyone. All songs are to the tune of “Happy Birthday,” but you can choose from congratulations songs, Happy Birthday in other languages, or happy holiday greetings—for everything from Chanukah to April Fool’s Day.

Emily has spread the word among friends and family about her efforts, but another way she promotes EZgreetings is by singing at baseball games. She has sung “Take Me Out to The Ballgame,” the national anthem, and “God Bless America” at games of the Camden Riversharks, Philadelphia Phillies, and Lehigh Valley Ironpigs and at other ballparks. “I love singing and performing,” says Emily, who even has a musical duo with her brother, a guitarist. They perform at nursing homes in her town.

Emily is proud of the difference she has made, but admits that she never expected to raise as much as she has. “I hope I can always keep it going and continue to raise awareness and funds,” says Emily. “”The more people know, the safer the world is for food-allergic people. Whenever someone sends a singing gram, they’re spreading the word about food allergies.”

Buy an EZgreetings singing gram for someone you care about at www.EZgreetings.org. All proceeds go to pediatric food allergy research conducted at Johns HopkinsUniversity.

Want to hear a greeting? Here’s “Happy Birthday Dog!“

Christopher Yao, Age 15

Christopher Yao: World Changer

When Christopher Yao was diagnosed with an under-jaw bite beginning in middle school, he was told his speech would worsen and that he could develop eating problems if he didn’t go through surgery. It was a struggle for him, and he felt self-conscious. “I know how it feels to go through tough situations like these,” Christopher says. “I developed a passion for helping others going through situations worse than mine.” Christopher started fundraising for The Smile Train, which provides free cleft-lip surgery to underprivileged children around the world—children who might otherwise be abandoned at birth or unable to live a normal life. He single-handedly ran a Read-A-Thon in his sixth-grade class and raised more than $2,000 in one month. “I’d seen the power that young people have to change the world, maybe even more than many adults. I wanted to leverage that power of enthusiasm.”

That was June 2007. By September, Christopher had launched an organization to inspire young people to get involved in their communities and help other children around the world. He named it Kids Change the World (and also established Kids Change America, the organization within Kids Change the World, which works in the United States).

In the past five years, 19,000 supporters have joined Kids Change the World, including those who have been impacted through youth-led programs that the organization has initiated. Kids Change the World has raised enough to fund 60 cleft surgeries and treatments in 78 of the world’s poorest countries. Christopher turned 15 in fall 2011.

White House Holiday Dinner

Kids Change the World is a great place for kids who are interested in volunteering to begin their journey, Christopher says. “Our main objective is to engage youth in service,” he says. “But we run our own programs, too, to hopefully get kids inspired.”

Every summer, Christopher and Kids Change the World run a Smile Train Read-A-Thon. They support and run many other programs, too, such as an Education Preparation program for students of all racial and economic backgrounds, a program that helps kids send thank-you letters to military, fundraising for Daos Children’s Centre in Kenya, Africa, and more. Kids Change the World also helps other kids start their own fundraising programs by providing free grassroots resources.

Christopher has received many honors and awards for his volunteerism. He has earned President Obama’s President’s Volunteer Award three years in a row and in December

Christopher recognized at the Nestle’s Very Best In Youth award ceremony

2011, he was invited to a White House Holiday Reception to meet the Obamas, congressmen and many other White House staff. He was inducted into the Long Island Volunteer Hall of Fame with the Next Generation Award for Visionary Philanthropy in January 2012. Christopher is the New York High School Honoree in the Prudential Spirit of Community Awards (2012) and one of Nestlé’s Very Best in Youth (2011).

Christopher keeps very busy with Kids Change the World, but one day, he will pass the reins to another young activist. He set up the organization with a 0% overhead rate and so that people under age 25 will run it—all 100% volunteers (so every dollar raised goes directly to programs). Later in life, he says, he will serve as a board member. A sophomore in high school, one day, Christopher hopes to study in the field of business or medicine and apply his studies to his charitable work, but he is open to many possibilities.

Christopher says it’s important to him to invest in the future of youth and our world. “I feel I have an obligation to be of service to others,” he says. He is inspired by his grandfather, Yulin Yao, who lost his parents at age five during the Chinese Revolution and worked on a farm picking weeds in exchange for food scraps. After graduating from the National Defense Medical Center in Tapei, Taiwan, he later came to the United States and worked at the U.S. Air Force Hospital on Clark Air Force Base during the Vietnam War. Today, he is a survivor of both prostate and lymphoma cancer. “My grandfather reminds me that miracles can happen. He also reminds me that not everyone has the opportunities I have, and that I need to help the people who don’t,” Christopher says. “I want to make the lives of people better in every possible way I can.”

Learn more about Kids Change the World at www.kidschangetheworld.org.

Happy New Year!!

Thank you to everyone for making it a great year. I feel so blessed and happy to have been at this blog for a whole year now, and I’m looking forward to featuring more fabulous kids in 2012. I’ve got some incredibly inspiring kids lined up already so stay tuned.

My best,

Michaele

Owen Schneider, Age 11

Owen Schneider, Toy-Raiser

When Owen Schneider turned seven, he gave away all of his birthday presents. The idea came to him when talking with his parents about his upcoming seventh birthday party—he decided if he had to choose between an expensive gift from his parents
and a party, he would choose celebrating with his friends. “You can give my presents away,” he told them.

So, Owen and his mom talked about giving to others and why it was a great thing to do. “We talked about the fact that I have a lot of toys and other kids don’t,” says Owen, now 10 years old. “I decided that my birthday, which is before Christmas, could be a good time to take my gifts and give them to kids who don’t have a lot.”

So, Owen donated all of his birthday gifts to Toys for Tots–his charity of choice. In the year leading up to his eighth birthday, Owen and his family shopped the toy clearance aisle at every opportunity and partnered with a Wal-Mart that was discarding clearance toys. When his birthday month came around (December) that year, Owen and his parents also planned a big birthday party in partnership with the local Chick-Fil-A. Forty kids, the Marines, and the local news stations showed up—and Owen collected around 50 more gifts for Toys for Tots. In spring 2009, Owen was awarded first prize in the Kids With Heart contest in Kansas City, Missouri.

Why does Owen do it? “It makes me feel good,” he says. “I think of the kids who don’t have toys and when I get a present, I think, ‘Wow, those kids don’t get this experience.’ I like thinking about what those kids might feel like when they open up a special gift on Christmas day.”

Since starting his Toys for Tots gift-raising in 2007, Owen has donated nearly 2,000 toys with the help of his community and friends. When his family moved to Loveland, Colorado, in 2009, Owen continued his charity work there, hosting his ninth birthday at another Chick-Fil-A. In March 2011, Owen earned the 9Kids Who Care Award from Colorado’s 9News KUSA-TV.

December 2, 2011 will mark Owen’s eleventh birthday and his fifth year of hosting a toy drive in lieu of a typical birthday party. “I started doing this just with friends, then with my school, and now I get on the radio and talk to the news stations to promote it,” says Owen. “This year will hopefully be the best one yet! I’m excited to get as many gifts as possible for these kids.”

Owen’s Toys for Tots party is December 1, 2011 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at the Loveland, Colorado, Chick-Fil-A. Learn more about Toys for Tots at www.toysfortots.org.

Owen's 2009 Toy Drive

Walker Crowley, Age 14

Walker Crowley, Future Doctor

Walker's big smile makes him a great volunteer with kids

Walker Crowley has wanted to be a doctor his whole life. “I was born that way, you could say,” says Walker, who is just shy of 15 years old. “I remember at my preschool graduation being asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I said a kid doctor.”

At an early age, Walker wanted to get medical experience, so he turned to someone who inspired him: his grandfather, Dr. Raymond Gutin. “He’s an endocrinologist at the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes, so I started working with him there just to get some experience,” says Walker. “It was really fun and I learned a lot. But I wanted to do something more impactful.”

Walker set his sights on Denver’s own Children’s Hospital Colorado, the largest children’s hospital in the western U.S. He learned that he could become a volunteer at the age of 13—but Walker was 12 at the time. “I went and got the application about a month before my 13^th birthday, and right after my birthday, I turned in my application in person,” Walker recalls. “I was so excited. I love spending time with kids. I really wanted to work with them and thought it would be fun and meaningful to help take care of them.”

At Children’s Hospital, Walker started out in float training, helping out wherever he was needed. “If families step out of the room for awhile, I just come in and sit with the kids, play with them, or take them around to play with toys,” says Walker. After floating, Walker worked in the gift shop for seven months. But from the first day he started, Walker really wanted to work in the ER.

He got his opportunity after proving himself as a reliable volunteer. These days, Walker

Walker winning the 9News Kids Who Care award, 2011

volunteers in the Level 1 trauma center at Children’s Hospital—every Sunday from 9:30 to 4:30. In the summers, he volunteers even more. Since he started as a volunteer, he’s put in hundreds of hours, but there’s no place he’d rather be. “What I like most is fixing kids at their worst times,” Walker says. “A lot of times after I’ve done my regular duties, I’ll just wait on the trauma side to observe and see what I can learn.”

Although Walker says he’s wanted to be a pediatrician for as long as he can remember, he also has a personal experience that helps him relate to the children patients who he works with. “I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease when I was seven, and I was in and out of the hospital for awhile,” Walker says. “It was a pretty uncomfortable time for me. I didn’t know what was going on; there were a lot of pokes and prods. So I can understand what these patients are going through. I like to help them with whatever they need, whether that’s watching a show together or giving them a blanket. Whatever I can do to make them comfortable.”

Walker says he’s still considering what pediatric specialty he might like best. “Right now, I think I want to work in pediatric anesthesiology,” he says. Whatever discipline he ends up in, Walker is motivated by more than a love of kids and medicine. “I love what I do at Children’s, because kids have a whole life ahead of them. I think that’s why I’m particularly interested in pediatric medicine. I want to help kids get better so they can go on and live their whole lives.”

When he’s not volunteering at Children’s Hospital Colorado, Walker likes enjoying Colorado’s outdoors. He loves to ski, hike, run and climb fourteeners (mountains that reach at least 14,000 feet in elevation). He spends a month at a camp each summer, which he calls his “home away from home,” and he also runs for his high school’s cross country team.

Charlie Fish, Age 13

Charlie Fish, App Whiz

Charlie Fish got his first Mac computer when he was six years old—and he’s loved Macs ever since. “I have been fascinated with computers since I was really little,” says Charlie, age 13. When Apple announced the iPhone in 2007, Charlie bought one with his own money. And the year after they introduced the iTunes App Store—when Charlie was just 11 years old—he taught himself to build an app.

Today, Charlie has built six iPhone apps and sells them for 99 cents each in the iTunes App Store. He’s one of the youngest registered Apple application developers. His most popular app is called Wizard Wand, a wand that you control by flicking your iPhone or iPod—it appeals to Harry Potter fans, Charlie says. His favorite app is The Monkey Business, in which the player controls a juggling monkey. Charlie’s apps are popular, too. He’s saving the money he earns from sales revenues and plans to buy a new car when he turns 16.

Charlie working on The Monkey Business

While Charlie is largely self-taught, he also has had several mentors along the way who have helped him become a better programmer. One is the chief technology officer at Double Encore, a mobile application company with clients in the sports, media and entertainment realms. Another was a computer science PhD student at the University of Denver.

Charlie attends an online school, which gives him more free time to program and meet with his mentors. “Something like iPhone programming isn’t really a class they teach in elementary or middle school,” Charlie says. “So I have to find people who can help me learn.” Charlie also attends camps and conferences whenever he can, including iD Tech Camp at the University of Denver and 360iDev, an iPhone developer conference held every fall (Charlie was the youngest attendee at the 2010 conference). “Some of these things are designed for adults, but they usually let me in. People are really nice, and I think they think it’s pretty cool that I’m a young app developer.”

In 2011, Charlie was nominated for the Young Americans Center for Financial Education Celebration for Young Entrepreneurs award and was selected as the winner in the 12-14-year-old category. He won $1,000, which he used to purchase a server, and was paired with a professional mentor, Stephanie Comfort, executive vice president at CenturyLink.

Charlie’s picture in the Young Americans Bank lobby

Charlie’s advice to other kids interested in developing iPhone apps? Keep working on it. “You do have to spend a lot of time on it, because it’s hard,” he admits. As for his own success, Charlie says it comes from a combination of hard work and passion. “I really work at it and I want to do it, too. It’s something I like doing and I put a lot of time and energy into.”

To visit Charlie’s available apps in the iTunes App Store, click here.

Chad Roberts, Age 12

Chad Roberts, Environmental Activist

It all started with an episode of Oprah in 2009.

Ten-year-old Chad Roberts was watching an Earth Day special about ocean pollution when he should have been doing homework. The images on the screen horrified Chad. Trash littering the coasts. A floating ocean garbage dump measured by some as twice
the size of Texas swirling in between California and Hawaii—in some places, as deep as 90 feet. Turtles, whales, and sea gulls getting caught in trash
vortexes, choking on bottle caps and plastic bags.

“I thought it was really sad,” says Chad, who is now 12. “There are literally tons and tons of trash in the ocean.  I just wanted to help in some way, to get some of the trash out of the oceans. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

Chad decided to tackle one of the ocean’s big problems—plastic bags that don’t degrade like natural materials do. He went to a City Council meeting in his home town of San
Clemente, California, and he made a proposal to city officials: ban plastic bags. He cited some of his research, including the fact that 100 billion plastic bags are used each year in the United States alone. Chad’s suggestion? Start by charging people 25 cents a plastic bag at grocery stores and retailers to encourage the use of reusable bags.

Chad lobbying for a cleaner Earth

The facts are disturbing but true. When people litter plastic bags or they’re not
recycled or put into a trash can, they can blow across the country or make
their way into drains and sewage systems. Then, they end up in our oceans, where birds and marine life often accidentally eat them and die. And because plastic bags are not biodegradable, they can pollute our environment for hundreds of years. In fact, plastic bags photodegrade, which means they eventually break down into small, toxic petro-polymers.

After going to the City Council, Chad also paid a visit to the editor of his city’s newspaper, the San Clemente Sun Post News, and asked if he could start writing articles about green living. The editor gladly agreed, and Chad landed a monthly column, where he writes about protecting the environment, reusable and green products, and more.

Chad believes in his cause so much that he uses his own money to buy reusable bags and hand them out around town. On Christmas Eve last year, he hung out outside of Albertsons and handed out cloth bags to shoppers. “Some people come up and say,
‘Hey, aren’t you that kid who writes that column?’ when they see me around,”
Chad says. “I like hearing when people say they use reusable bags because of
me. I do think adults listen to you when you’re a kid. How many kids show up at
City Council meetings with an argument on getting rid of plastic bags?”

Chad says there are five simple things any person can do to have a positive impact on the
environment:

1. Don’t litter. Ever!

2. Recycle anything and everything you can. (It’s easier to do when you have a “recycle can” next to the trash can in your house.)

3. Use green cleaning products made of plants, not chemicals.

4. Don’t wash your car with a hose. Instead, find a waterless carwash.

5. Think about your environment!

“A lot of people and businesses are going green now, so I think we’re taking the right steps,” Chad says. “But we can always do more. I want to keep doing this to encourage others to be green.”

Chad’s other passions include fencing and acting, which he pursues in his free time. He hopes to one day follow in the footsteps of actor/activist Ed Begley, Jr., whom he met at the Go Green Expo in Los Angeles in 2010.

Here are a few great websites for kids who want to learn more about preserving the world’s environment:

http://www.epa.gov/kids/

http://www.kidsrecyclingzone.com/

http://www.kab.org/

http://meetthegreens.pbskids.org

Jordan Martin, Age 9