The following individuals competed in and were finalists for the Fall 2023 Changemakers Writing Contest. This event calls for 500-word student proposals about a social problem and potential solution, with prizes of up to $1,500 going to winning essays.
Finalist: Towards Equitable Recycling: Bridging Gaps in Sustainability
By Chad Hyer, Molecular Biology
I had just made the move of a lifetime. Rural Georgia was a very different place for an eight-year-old accustomed to the urban sprawl of Los Angeles. Despite leaving friends and everything I knew, the future looked bright, and I was excited for my next adventure. Upon arriving in rural Georgia, however, I quickly learned about the different circumstances faced by people living in underserved areas, and this profoundly impacted my trajectory. Life in rural areas is much slower. Slowness has benefits, but access to opportunity, information, and basic services are not quite the same in rural areas. As an eight-year-old, I was unphased by many of these differences. I had my family and the new people I met were nice to me, but I was surprisingly bothered by one simple change: I could no longer recycle. Growing up, I always knew to separate my paper from my food waste, but when my mother told me I had to throw my cardboard cereal box into the trash bin with my banana peel, I was bewildered. I asked “can’t I recycle this” to which she replied “yes, but our town doesn’t have recycling.” The story follows that I dejectedly tossed the cardboard box into the trash and remarked that “I just didn’t feel like myself anymore.” Why an eight-year-old would feel so strongly about recycling, I don’t know, but I still feel the same to this day.
Fast forward 15 years, and now I live in Provo, Utah. Provo is very different from Georgia, but recycling is still a problem. As a student, I am not afforded the same access to services as a long-term resident. I am at the mercy of my landlords or apartment complex owners of whether or not I can recycle, and the vast majority do not consider recycling a priority. This problem has bugged me, and as a result, I have dedicated much of my time at BYU to finding ways to increase people’s access to recycling.
As a student, I started a glass recycling company called Glass Roots Recycling to remedy a lack of access to glass recycling in Provo. I do not currently have the resources to solve general recycling, but I do have the ability to create a sustainable solution for glass recycling, so I have executed on it. In my studies, I have also focused on improving recycling. I study molecular biology. While most people conflate biology and medicine, I have always focused on how I can use my knowledge of biology and chemistry to solve problems regarding sustainability. I aim to pursue a PhD in bioengineering and would like to use my skills to develop new approaches to sustainably produce and recycle materials using molecular machines. Doing so, I hope to generate a generally accessible, equitable, and affordable solution that can bridge gaps in sustainability by allowing anyone, anywhere in the world to recycle, especially in rural areas like where I hailed from.
Finalist: Building Leaders through High School Entrepreneurship Training
By Chris Barrientos, Latin American Studies
#gothedistance. That’s been my motto since I watched the movie “Hercules” for the first time. Something about that phrase has inspired me to be a better person and help others. It’s helped me to endure pain and go through hard tasks in this mortal life. And it’s leading me to change the world. I grew up in the States but my parents are both immigrants from third world countries in Latin America. My parents struggled to make a living at first as they didn’t have an opportunity to receive an education after high school. They both had their own small businesses which led us to live comfortably as a middle-class family. That was my first contact with entrepreneurship.
After taking some classes in entrepreneurship at BYU, I made the decision that I wanted to be an entrepreneur myself. There are many ideas that I have right now but one that has been pressing on my mind is the need for an entrepreneurship education at an early age. It never occurred to me that I could be an entrepreneur as a high schooler since I’ve been taught to go to a university in order to get a degree all my life. I really think that if we implement entrepreneurship programs in high schools, we will see more emerging youth leaders. You may ask, how will I go about this? First of all, there is no way I can do this alone. I need a team. Together, we will need to recruit successful entrepreneurs in each school district to teach these classes at their local high school. This might be through a survey to see if they would be willing to do so. They can share their journey to entrepreneurship and inspire high schoolers to consider it an option. This process will start locally here in Utah to test out the waters. But eventually, the goal would be to implement these programs in third-world countries like those in Latin America as they would benefit the most from it.
I think the main cause of poverty in these countries is because there are not enough great leaders that can run the country well and not enough profit being produced (GDP per capita). If we can teach children in these countries entrepreneurship skills at a young age, we will see more emerging youth leaders who will eventually lead their countries. This process would be similar in that we can recruit entrepreneurs from their countries to teach a class or at least come as guest speakers. The goal would be to recruit leaders from different industries such as in food and retail. The younger generation needs us to inspire them to lead. I think in a sense we all want to change the world in some way. Or at least leave an impact on a particular community. But oftentimes we don’t do anything about it. So I’m going to do everything I can to “go the distance” through this business idea.
Finalist: Global Employment Opportunities
By Aidan Quigley, Economics Major, Business Strategy Minor and Global & Community Impact Minor
I believe changing the world involves harnessing the unique skills of one group to address the distinct needs of another. I am passionate about facilitating that connection, and I feel like I’m currently standing in the middle of an absolute gamechanger: We should spin out the capabilities of the BYU Record Linking Lab (RLL) to create economic opportunities for disadvantaged populations. The lab can hire, train, and qualify people, then directly connect them with the emerging AI market to meet its massive labor demand. Dr. Joe Price’s Record Linking Lab is a student-powered economics research team that researches marginalized communities.
This year, in efforts to improve our output and effectiveness, we partnered with BYU Pathway to hire two-hundred international students, many of whom work entirely from a smartphone in Africa. Collaborating professionally with these people was touching and inspiring; however, we encountered surprising skepticism from community stakeholders about the quality of their work. Our team worked to challenge these misconceptions, auditing employee workflows, successfully proving their efficiency and reliability. In a separate test program, we proved that individuals with autism or other developmental disabilities are extremely proficient in reverse indexing work. When we stopped and considered these remarkable collaborations, it felt like we had discovered a superpower: we can affordably provide meaningful employment to anyone, anywhere.
What we did with these two disadvantaged groups is scalable. The rapidly-growing AI market needs machine-learning training data. This data is simple to produce, but the quantity demanded is massive. Large tech companies want to hire low-cost employees for this baseline work but fear compromising on quality. The RLL can solve this issue, vetting their reliability through our program. The potential impact here is immense. Historically, individuals from disadvantaged demographics have been supported through traditional welfare avenues. The RLL presents the best alternative to welfare: employment. I posit that the RLL can create jobs for chronically unemployed demographics. It can function as an economically viable employment vehicle, servicing many different disadvantaged populations, mitigating tax-funded welfare. Individuals benefit psychologically from feelings of attainment, and economies benefit from increased workforce participation and decreased welfare dependency. Win-win.
Who are specific demographics the RLL could help?
- International BYU-Pathway Students: Thirty-four thousand, who have professional skills yet still face unemployment challenges
- Utah Autism Population: Third highest in the nation, who face an 80% unemployment rate
- Utah Homeless Population: 3,557 people
- Utahns in State Prisons: Obvious constraints limit traditional employment opportunities
- Additional demographics facing chronic unemployment challenges
Note: Nearly all people in these demographics have access to reliable internet via personal devices, public libraries, etc.
Picturing the future, I imagine a Utahn exiting homelessness, having developed a resume that includes “BYU Research Assistant.” I imagine an African with an AI Annotation Certificate hired by an international tech firm, cultural barriers of distance and distrust replaced by increased opportunity. And I imagine much more. There is an obvious and profoundly symbiotic relationship here, and I believe the RLL is positioned and prepared to make it happen.