“I don’t see much positive representation from our community all the time,” Kaba said. “I was thinking ‘my scholarship won’t get picked.’ But it did … and I was able to bring something so big to my community, a community that already doesn’t have the most funding in the world.” 

The scholarship, , asks students to answer, “if you had $1 million how would you target the lives of those in Rhode Island and how would you create change?”

Kaba’s investments resulted in a number of youth-centered spaces and opportunities popping up across the city, including 120 calm corners in elementary classrooms to support students’ sensory functions, new physical education equipment for all Woonsocket elementary schools, job fairs, hundreds of donated books, and field trips to local colleges & universities, among others.

Kaba, who is now a rising sophomore at Northeastern University, describes the experience of winning the scholarship as surreal.

“It didn’t occur to me that I was the last person standing and I won $1 million,” Kaba said. “But when I won, the first thing I thought was, ‘OK, let’s get to work. I’m given this opportunity to help improve my community. What steps can I take? And when does the groundwork start happening?’”

When a teen leads, adults follow

Bringing Kaba’s vision to life meant working alongside adults with experience in project management and community engagement while keeping up with her student life at Woonsocket High School.

“In high school, I managed both classwork and extracurriculars like student council, being a peer mentor and participating in Future Business Leaders of America,” Kaba said. “Balancing those things with my work with the scholarship came easy to me.”

Kaba partnered with community organizations across the state like nonprofit . This collaboration helped lay out a roadmap for Kaba’s proposal, manage the scholarship funds and coordinate meetings with community leaders. 

The winning student also sits on the board of the Papitto Opportunity Connection Foundation for a year. This provides an opportunity for them to build their network and connect with leaders in Rhode Island. 

High schoolers can make a difference through spaces and support like this, Kaba said, and also advises teens interested in engaging with their community to “not be afraid to start off small.”

This “small” gesture, Kaba added, can be as simple as gathering a group of friends to organize a community cleanup or starting a school club or Instagram to advocate for something they’re passionate about.

“Starting off small is going to give you those steps to leading these big impactful projects,” Kaba said.

The feedback Kaba received on her community investments, primarily from peers, community members and teachers in Woonsocket, was overwhelmingly positive.

“People told me, ‘I was able to go to this job fair and I got connected to this job,’ or, ‘I’m going to the Harbour Youth Center to get items from the food pantry you created and it’s been helping my family a lot,’” Kaba said. “Community organizations reached out to me to let me know they would love to find a way to work together and do their part to take action too.”

Whether they were among the 10,000 who attended a virtual prom hosted by or celebrated by dressing up at home and dancing virtually with their friends, the Class of 2020 would not be denied a prom.

“I just put on my lamp upstairs so I could have some nice lighting,” Makinde La Veau, dancing in his dining room at his school’s virtual prom, . “I’m a senior. This is going to be my last prom, so I just want to make it fun.”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=sH2HWTZ72BI

La Veau, a senior at Eastern Technical High School in Baltimore, clearly knows what to do when life gives him lemons.

“We’re still alive,” La Veau said. “Life is like this, so as long as I’m still here, I’m going to enjoy it to the fullest.”

In Sweetwater, Texas, Grayson Chapman’s mother wasn’t about to let her daughter graduate without a little prom fun.

“Grayson thought it sounded a little cheesy at first. But she was so excited to get to be able to dress up after all and go to her last ‘prom,’” Jaci Chapman told . “Once we started getting the porch decorated and cranked up the music, she really started getting into the spirit of it!”

https://www.facebook.com/virtualprom/photos/a.116618289988213/129255215391187/?type=3&theater

At Northwest High School in Jackson, Michigan, seniors Meg Moffitt and Chelsea Devolder made a video of their classmates wearing their prom dresses.

“We wanted to make something for girls to show their dresses,” Meg told , the school district’s video news channel. “Boys were invited, but we didn’t get any of those. We had about 35 or 36 girls, though, so it was a good turnout.”

In Knoxville, Tennessee, a hosted a prom for high school seniors throughout Eastern Tennessee.

Hannah Lucas, 18, a senior at South Forsyth High School in Forsyth County, Georgia, and her brother Charlie, 15, a freshman, created the “We Are Well Prom” to help seniors feel less alone, reported.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_tH2exlX04/

At the Vista Peak Preparatory School in Aurora, Colorado, social distancing didn’t stop students from choosing prom royalty.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_gQzpmlbIt/

As for the prom Michelle Obama hosted, it was put on by MTV and When We All Vote, a nonprofit that aims to raise voter participation, reported. Obama is co-chair of the group and wanted to ensure that COVID-19 doesn’t cause the 18-year-old virtual prom-goers to miss out on another rite of passage — voting in November.

The coronavirus may change the world, but it can’t stifle the creativity of high school seniors who want what seniors before them have always taken for granted — a yearbook that showcases their shared history, presents their photos, lists their accomplishments and, sometimes, includes a silly quote.

Students nationwide have turned to Instagram and YouTube to fill the void left by physical yearbooks that have gone unpublished.

“It’s kind of sad that we can’t physically sign each other’s yearbooks, but in the absence of that, this Instagram account gives us a chance to maintain some sense of tradition,” Billy Duke, a senior at Friends Academy in Locust Valley, New York, told .

The Instagram pages are hosted and designed by students who invite their fellow seniors to submit photos and information to them via direct messages. The submissions are displayed on a single page. Then students, friends, family and teachers can post comments on each student’s entry, just as if signing a printed yearbook.

“We’ve remained together over Zoom and Google Hangouts, and that does part of the trick in maintaining our school community academically, but beyond academics there’s so much more that goes into a school — the clubs, academics, plays, all of which has been canceled,” Duke told NBC. “I think the Instagram account is us trying to find that sense of community outside of the schoolwork.”

At North Attleboro High School in Massachusetts, students created a YouTube video to show that COVID-19 was not going to stop the Class of 2020, which has already lived through major events. It starts with a stream of seniors, each reciting a line about their collective memory.

“We were born in the wake of 9/11,” students say. “We entered a world where technology took over our lives. We entered elementary school at the start of the stock market crash. We were only in fifth grade when the Sandy Hook school shootings happened. We were in middle school during the Boston bombing, and we entered high school as mass shootings became the norm.”

Matt Bieger, a senior at Dunwoody High School in Georgia, set up his school’s Instagram Class of 2020 page.

“These accounts are something a lot of schools have done,” Bieger told . “Every high school I know is starting to use a page like this to celebrate their senior class. I’ve seen it across the country.”

He’s right — yearbook pages are popping up on social media from all over.

From Iowa:

From Ohio:

Some students, like the seniors at Calaveras High School in San Andreas, California, have created a hybrid yearbook, animating their Instagram page in a video on YouTube.

Ariana Mendoza, a senior at Conestoga High School in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, told the Times she wanted all students, even those without Instagram accounts, to be able to participate, so she asked for submissions through the school’s online learning platform.

Sarah Szabo, a co-creator of an Instagram page for North Springs Charter School of Arts and Sciences in Georgia, told NBC her account started as a way for students to share pictures of their lives but gradually transformed into a yearbook.

“Since we’re not going to really get to graduate together or see each other one last time all together, we thought we’d make an Instagram account,” Szabo told NBC. “Normally at school we’d have pictures and announcements on the monitors showing what people are doing after graduation, but we couldn’t have that this year.”

Randini Rana and Alisha Soni, both seniors at Farragut High School in Knoxville, Tennessee, told that the Instagram yearbook they jointly created was a kind of civic duty.

“We’re both members of the student government, so we’re used to working in an environment where we try to keep everybody connected,” Rana said. “I think that’s why it seemed like a no-brainer for us, because we want to keep a good community after high school.”

In search of a little uplifting art, we took a spin through Twitter and Instagram ourselves over the past week. Below, an unforgettable gallery of brightness and positivity that offers a brief respite from the grim daily headlines — from artistic masterpieces to hilarious jokes, surprising math problems and memorable messages of perseverance:

These days, good news can be hard to find. But a movement that’s taken off in school communities nationwide means that signs of hope are now right there, just outside the front door.

In Jacksonville, Florida, Duval County Public School leaders put out a call for sidewalk art that could keep students engaged while spreading words of kindness through the district, reported.

It’s called the Chalk Your Walk initiative, and it has not only beautified streetscapes, it’s become a social media sensation. (See our full photo gallery of noteworthy street scenes.)

From the elementary grades to middle school and high school, students and teachers are hitting the pavement to create works of art that are colorful, uplifting and fun — if only until the next rainfall.

At Rosenthal Montessori Elementary in Alexandria, Louisiana, gratitude was chalked on the sidewalk to honor the assistant principal for AP Appreciation Week.

At Lake Highlands Elementary School in Dallas, phys ed coach Jessi Pittman combined Chalk Your Walk with a little gym activity that could have been called Chalk the Hop.

https://www.facebook.com/LakeHighlandsElementary/videos/235817427568044/?__xts__[0]=68.ARCy8WTsYLYgc-6TDjLJfdC9GfTrxcCasnkoVMf489x4Fbcf4ODMD3_pJv-AiRNZxe12aaowKHW9rjHgvrA-UTgF2TYrscVCZvRikC0sXEiwyKUCwaZ8aIHpNMH34y2YXsWXWm6dEuvqBoDz1l45Wkg3zimjRpX3ke_y6xLG0WksyIY7Qgmv6jzjPj_QmkQu-Su2AIVhcoNXtl9kao76OCeH02wfKBe1j-AKXOSWbp7PhtcIaNTaaZeHAs_YDW2t0-zotF0dPTlcmcM5Dx1-S7Pdb8DCDiJJHlnMG2VF5eJKe6hgjCzLApqVSVDh26-rQ8gaLPZdVo2qugU1cotLOPcqrrAqBwHuTBzpxg&__tn__=-R

At Kilby Elementary School in Woodbridge, Virginia, art teacher Teresa Woodson tried out her ideas for next year’s projects on her own children.

Some Central High School students in San Angelo, Texas, couldn’t resist decorating their entire walkway.

https://twitter.com/CentralCan/status/1246950944740442112

James Roscoe, principal at Grayslake North High School in Illinois, gave his art a title.

In Iowa’s Norwalk High School, even pets got in on Chalk Your Walk.

But for students at Rucker Elementary School in Houston, Chalk Your Walk was only one of the fun activities school officials dreamed up for Spirit Week. Teachers put out a call for one fun activity after another.

First there was Build a Reading Fort day.

https://twitter.com/WriterMamaTX/status/1247947503703666693

Then there was Silly Dance Day.

And Favorite Snack Day.

But Chalk Your Walk Day got the most posts of all.

Some Rucker Elementary students liked the idea so much, they took it further and created pet rocks.

A quick #ChalkYourWalk highlight reel: