WRITING CHALLENGE
On Hold for 2024-2025.
REEL CHALLENGE
On Hold for 2024-2025.
END HUNGER CHALLENGE
Complete the Challenge by October 16th 2024 and get a free tote bag!*
First 200 participants. Must pick up from the Ballard Center 360 TNRB on campus in Provo.
THE CHANGEMAKER
CHALLENGES
Do you love the idea of helping to change the world? Are you passionate about philanthropy, humanitarianism, or sustainability? Are you a creative problem solver? Have great writing skills? Or prefer making videos?
Whatever your major, skillset, or background, we know that YOU can make a difference.
The Changemaker Challenges are here to give you the nudge you need to get started, because all great ideas have to come from somewhere, so why not here? Why not now? And why not from you?
WHAT IS A
CHANGEMAKER?
What does it mean to be a Changemaker? Changemakers see opportunities all around them to make the world better. They take the time to learn about social issues like poverty, homelessness, environmental sustainability, inequality, and more, and then they come up with creative ideas for how to help solve them.
Want support as you strive to be a Changemaker? Join our community of BYU Changemakers to start making a difference today!
PAST WINNERS
Kelaney Stalker wants to provide a conclusive, inexpensive, noninvasive test for endometriosis and is studying how to use methylation to diagnose endometriosis through a blood sample.
Nazanin Paymard initiated a modest fundraising effort, aiming to purchase laptops and tablets to send to the children in Afghanistan, allowing for virtual instruction, and continues to teach classes online to young women in the region.
Abbie Sanders emphasizes her studies in nonprofit management and wants to provide special training for therapists, teaching them the necessary skills to help those with intellectual disabilities.
Chad Hyer aims to pursue a Ph.D. in bioengineering and would like to develop new approaches to sustainability by generating a generally accessible, equitable, and affordable recycling solution that can bridge gaps in sustainability.
Chris Barrientos wants to inspire the younger generation to lead by recruiting successful entrepreneurs in local school districts to teach and mentor students in high schools.
Aidan Quigley sees potential in BYU's Record Linking Lab (RLL) and wants to expand it to create economic opportunity in disadvantaged communities globally by hiring, training, and qualifying people before connecting them to the emerging AI market.
Jacob and Garrett Stanford are pre-accounting majors. In their reel, they share their idea for creating engaging video games and donating the profits to philanthropic efforts.
Emmie Sheets, a pre-communication major, shares her idea of elevating people from poverty by helping them learn how to read.
Eli Wright, an advertising major, shares his innovative approach for water conservation in airports.
Nicole Thorsen is a pre-dietetics major and shares her proposal for overcoming child malnutrition in Laos through effective training methods that empower local women.
Natalia Holt, a pre-business major, shares her vision for combatting homelessness in El Salvador by repurposing large cargo storage containers into shelters.
Sage Payne is a public health major. In her submission, she shares her vision of empowering people to overcome food insecurity by teaching them how to garden.
After losing my optimism, nearly 12 years of memory, and my hope all over again, I sat on my apartment floor and painted what I then entitled #6. After my sixth concussion from yet another freak accident, my brain could not produce the words to express my hopelessness. With a reality almost as painful as the chaos in my head, I used abstract art to express the emotions I couldn't articulate.
“Mami, in all the books I read, why doesn’t anyone look or act like us?” I’m told I started reading before I was three years old. I quickly advanced from picture books with one word a page to early reader chapter books to volumes of fantasy, self-help and scripture. I devoured words, sentences, and paragraphs; inserted myself into fictional worlds so much that I lost track of reality; and checked out dozens upon dozens of books at the library, quickly realizing that I did not feel represented by my favorite childhood characters.
I sat with my back against the Mount Kailash School in Nepal, facing the Himalayas. My volunteer group was fixing up a schoolhouse for over 200 Tibetan refugee students.
During a break, we asked the children, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
The children immediately responded: "I'm learning English so I can be a teacher."
"I want to be a dancer and a mom."
"I want to be a cook."
"I want to be a doctor!"
I was happily stunned.
My Aunt Connie hands me a steamed Shanghainese crab, roe side up. It drips butter, yolky orange, down my fingers — like custard and sweet milk. Somehow I always end up with the bigger piece, because that’s just how Connie is. I feel my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, but I don’t know if it’s crab butter, or something more sentimental, like love. I’m not sure there’s a difference.
New storms are named almost every week, storms that can be troubling to us East coasters, places like the Georgia coast where I am from. In the past couple of years alone, my family and I have had to evacuate twice, leaving our home and everything behind. Rains and wind would come in damaging amounts, and we would come back after a couple of days not knowing if our house would even still be standing.
Imagine this, you find yourself waking up to loud thuds of heavy rain hitting the tin roof of your 8 x 8 ft home. You forgot to take off the wooden board that covers your 3 ft deep clay pot that is your water source for everything including showering, cooking, and washing the dishes.
You have access to a well but collecting rainwater is much cleaner than the water out of a well. You quickly run outside to uncover your clay pot in hopes that the rain will fill it up before it stops pouring, so that by tomorrow you may use this water for your daily needs.
In high school, I developed a vicious cognitive demon: anorexia. This mental usurper and dictator of choice sent me into a spiral of debilitating anxiety, depression, and eroding existence; my heart had physically weakened, shrunk, and shifted out of place, my straw-like hair fell out, sitting was painful because of my protruding tailbone, my blued, coarse nails, sunken eyes, and bulging bones displayed more death than life. I was desperate and almost hopeless…
For me, growing up in a war-torn Colombia meant turning the TV on every night at 7 p.m. to find out how many children were abducted and forcibly enlisted by military groups, or how many people had been killed in rural communities simply for being born in regions where external forces determined their fate. After years of listening to this devastating news play over and over again, the sheer number of victims of these atrocities was impressed on my mind…
I’ve been to a lot of parties, but I’ve only been to one where I found out I was virtually blind in one eye. When I was about five years old, my brother had a pirate-themed birthday party, and when my mom came to put on my pirate eye patch, I told her to put it over my left eye, because if she put it over my right one, I wouldn’t be able to see. This launched me into years of eye doctor appointments, wearing patches (over my good eye this time), and getting used to glasses…
The day a baby is born is supposed to be the most joyful day of a parent’s life. After hours of labor the baby is cleaned, wrapped in a blanket, and placed on the mother’s chest as the nurses congratulate the happy parents on the incredible feat of bringing a child into the world. However, the day I was born looked nothing like this. The nurse who cleaned me up noticed something in the top of my mouth – or rather, she noticed a lack of something in the top of my mouth…
I’m on the Dean’s List. Again. My planner is usually packed with meticulous notes detailing my various academic goals. My transcript is nearly flawless. But all of this has come at a cost. Each semester, I’ve sacrificed hobbies, fun, and time with my family to achieve my idea of happiness: academic perfection. Despite my best efforts, my high GPA hasn’t improved my happiness; it’s killed it…
You don't need to wait to change the world. Regardless of your major, friend group, or future ambitions, you can have real impact and literally change the world — today! My great uncle and namesake, Captain Robert Alan Rex, was shot down in Laos during the Vietnam War in 1968, leaving a spouse and two children behind. Robert was missing in action for more than 25 years. After her son went missing, my great-grandmother, Pearl Rex, became a champion of abused…
The summer after fourth grade, clinical depression hit me like a heavyweight boxer. My normally vivacious, inquisitive self was knocked out, leaving little Sarah entirely hollow. Anxiety filled the void, a possessive coach whose constant companionship provided nothing but loneliness. After a season of spending recess alone inside and emotionally crashing after school every day, I learned skills to fight my mental illness back…
Driving up to a weathered brown apartment building in South Salt Lake, Khinhla, Win Tae, and their brothers rolled down the windows excitedly as I turned up the music. Shattering the silence, we got out and started dancing to the radio. As if anticipating our arrival, the front doors of the apartments facing us swung open and Burmese refugee mothers smiled as their children darted past to join us…
In 2015, I returned from an LDS Mission in Kobe, Japan and struggled to find meaning in my day-to-day classes and job at Chik-Fil-A. While nuggets and honey mustard were delicious, I wanted to do something that brought about social good. On a particularly busy week, I remember feeling like I really couldn’t make myself fry another chicken patty. My job felt unfulfilling, and I wanted to do more. I promised myself that if I quit - I would find something meaningful to do…
Headed to school on another regular day, I saw first responder vehicles blocking off a whole street near my home. Glancing as I passed, I couldn’t see what had happened, though it had obviously been a fatal accident. As I got to school, the hustle and bustle of class, homework, and friends consumed my attention and I forgot all about the accident— that is, until second period when the school police officer and counselor escorted me from class to the office…
During lunch in middle school and high school there was always the gathering of like-minded groups: those that loved to talk about video games, those that were theater fanatics, and those that were athletes. For one who didn’t fit any of those social constructs, I floated for years hoping one day to be surrounded by people that I can relate with. It was a difficult time for me, but I learned and grew a lot. I started to notice that I had a desire to make the world a better place…
When I walked into an info session for a Ballard Center Social Innovation Case Competition, I had only planned on enjoying a free J Dawg- replete with banana peppers and drizzled with its iconic special sauce - then trekking back to the library to finish my homework. However, as I loitered long enough to not look too much the hot dog opportunist, I got hooked by an opportunity to become involved in an international development project right here on BYU campus…