The Aspen Challenge strives to build future generations of engaged and equitable leaders by providing tools and a platform for high school students to play critical roles in identifying, designing, and implementing solutions to their community’s biggest needs. It was launched by the Aspen Institute and Bezos Family Foundation in 2012.
On April 18 from 8:45 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. at the Brooklyn Army Terminal, twenty high schools in the Brooklyn North designation (community school districts: 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 23, and 32) participated in this annual effort. Each school accepted one of the five presented challenges and were given ten weeks to design solutions that would create a better, more equitable community. They then presented their solutions to a panel of judges, with the winning team earning an all-expense paid trip to present at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
This year’s grand prize winner is Multicultural High School whose project, “Immigr8,” hosted events and created spaces for students and their families to honor the diversity of their majority-immigrant school community and to access the rights and opportunities available to them as residents of New York City.
Williamsburg Preparatory High School, one of the schools in our area, was awarded third place with their “Living Labs,” which equipped elementary school students with knowledge and resources to grow their own food in the event of a climate emergency by using hydroponics.
Other area schools in the exercise were: Williamsburg High School for Art and Technology (Rat Patrol: a project that hoped to influence the behaviors of adolescents in Williamsburg, which would decrease the rat population and improve quality of life); the High School for Enterprise, Business and Technology (their anti-vermin project’s goal was also to solve the rat problem); and the East Williamsburg Scholars Academy (their project targeted hate crime by creating effective solutions to address discrimination).
The Greenline 