Student Makers: teen volunteers are teaching STEM across three continents
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM In 2022, a group of high schoolers designed 150 LEGO-inspired airplane kits, 3D-printed them one by one, assembled them by hand, and shipped them to a school in Kenya. How is that for a nonprofit origin story? Student Makers was founded in California in Read More...
Oakland kids can now borrow sports gear for free at this special library
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Youth sports in the United States now cost the average family about $1,016 a year per child, up 46 percent since 2019, according to the Aspen Institute’s 2025 State of Play report. In Oakland, where just 14 percent of kids get the recommended 60 minutes of Read More...
Earth Prize 2026 part I: teenage teams tackling big global problems
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Every year, The Earth Prize asks teenagers across the world the same question: what environmental problem would you solve, and how? Every year, the answers come from young people who live closest to the problem. After five years and more than 21,000 students Read More...
Earth Prize 2026 part II: seaweed fabric, hornbill nests, and a healing bandage
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM This is part two of our Earth Prize 2026 coverage. Part one covered four regional winners from Ireland, Kenya, Gaza, and India, including Tala and Farah Mousa, whose Build Hope Palestine project we first wrote about earlier this month. Here are the remaining Read More...
Gaza sisters turn rubble into bricks to rebuild their community
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM The house Tala and Farah Mousa were living in was bombed. So they looked at the rubble and started asking what it could become. Their answer is Build Hope, Palestine: a way to turn debris from damaged buildings into reusable blocks. Crushed and sieved Read More...
The high school student whose filter uses magnetic oil to trap microplastics
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM The story starts with a newspaper article and a neighborhood that wasn't getting help. A few years ago, Mia Heller came across a report about water quality in her community in Warrington, Virginia. Tests had found the local water was heavily contaminated Read More...
Summer jobs do way more than just keeping kids busy
Nobody wants to see their kids spending the entire summer in front of a screen. While everyone can benefit from some time off, too much free time can be a detriment to everyone, especially youth and teens. Between ages 14 and 24, youth have formative experiences which affect the rest of their Read More...
Why it's important to teach kids how to celebrate themselves
This past year put many milestones, events, and special occasions on hold, especially for young ones growing up during a global pandemic. However, the importance of celebrations should not be overlooked, particularly now. While children are motivated at school by praise and recognition, for Read More...
French rap star Abd al Malik inspires change among inner city youth
Abd al Malik embraced rap as a way to channel his frustration, tell his story and critique society. Carmel Wroth | April 2009 issue French rapper Abd al Malik has no trouble explaining why young men in the French ghettos usually celebrate New Year’s Eve by torching cars. “When you live in a Read More...
Video: Abd Al Malik,
"Gibraltar" is the title track of Abd al Malik's hip hop/slam poetry album. The album reflects Malik's personal experiences in turning a life of violence around, as well as his perspective on the mixture of his Congolese and French backgrounds. He uses Gibraltar as the symbolic meeting point of Read More...