Like many, when Steven Hoffen found himself in lockdown due to COVID-19, he wanted to do something meaningful with his time. Unlike many, he was just 13 years old when he created an award-winning documentary in 2020. The short film was inspired by a prior trip to Israel in 2019, where Hoffen worked with Sindyanna of Galilee, a nonprofit where Arab and Jewish women work closely together growing produce in hydroponic gardens.
Let’s get uplifted with Annabelle Lombard, Max Blacksten, and Benjamin Joel; Northern Virginia teens who’ve received well-earned recognition — and $36,000 each — for the outstanding good works they’re doing.
Along with four other friends, Lombard, now 19, founded Generation Ratify, a youth-led nonprofit to advocate for constitutional gender equality through the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment and other legislation promoting gender equality.
Three teens from Northern Virginia were each awarded $36,000 by the Helen Diller Family Foundation as part of its annual awards recognizing Jewish teen leaders across the United States.
Henry Lien, a 17-year-old from Mill Valley, has been awarded $36,000 from a Bay Area philanthropy organization for his work in establishing ChessPals, a program to teach chess to younger students from underserved communities in Marin.
A Little Rock advocate for Holocaust education was one of 15 young people this year to receive a Diller Teen Tikkun Olam Award from the San Francisco-based Helen Diller Family Foundation. David Ronnel, a 2022 Central High School graduate, is giving his $36,000 in prize money to the Arkansas Holocaust Education Award Donation Fund.
A national foundation has spotlighted two Jewish teen leaders from New Jersey, granting them $36,000 each for creating initiatives aimed at “building a better world.” While one of the awardees uses the social media platform TikTok to educate people about the Holocaust, the second recipient has her own lab where she tests a self-developed bioassessment tool that has the potential to become a global standard.
A local Santa Barbara teen was one of 15 teenagers nationwide receiving a 2023 Diller Teen Tikkun Olam Award and prize from the Helen Diller Family Foundation. Romy Greenwald will receive $36,000 in recognition of her work leading MiSendero, an intercultural student-to-student tutoring program.