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Camas students will present the 2022 TEDxYouth@Camas event, featuring six speakers, from 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 6, at Ripple Space in Vancouver.
TEDxYouth@Camas is “100 percent youth-led event … and a unique opportunity to showcase youth in the (Portland-Vancouver metro) area,” said recent Camas High School graduate Maggie Wood, one of 14 Camas students involved in the creation of the 2022 TEDx event — a program described as “a grassroots initiative created in the spirit of TED’s overall mission to research and discover ‘ideas worth spreading.'”
The 2022 TEDxYouth event organized by Camas youth is built around a “Building Blocks of Our World” theme.
“We hope to explore some fundamental ideas that society stands on,” Wood explained. “So much has changed in the last two years as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This theme allows us to focus on innovation, human interactions, fundamentals of health and much more.”
This year’s TEDxYouth@Camas speakers include:
- Easton Quast, “Living your most beautiful life story” — An incoming fifth-grader at Sunset Ridge Intermediate School in Ridgefield, Quast told TEDxYouth organizers that he is committed to living his most beautiful life story and empowering others to live theirs, too.
- Daniel Waheed, “Heart disease prevention focused on addressing social and human issues” — Waheed is a junior at the The Bolles School in Jacksonville, Florida who said they have “a passion for the realm of public health and understanding how policies and interventions have played into certain trends in healthcare.”
- Merita Jaha, “Boosting happiness through art” — An award-winning artist and art teacher from Kosovo, with one of her paintings hanging in the Art Museum of Cosenza, Italy, Jaha will share her vision of the world through a kaleidoscope of colors and discuss art’s impact on our lives.
- Asjia Chapin, “The world as seen through the eyes of an individual with autism” — Chapin, a senior at Union High School, is passionate about advocating for mental health and the toll it takes on families.
- Dr. Aumatma Simmons, “Naturopathic approach to infertility” — Aumatma is a double board-certified naturopathic doctor and endocrinologist who helps couples create the family of their dreams and trains doctors who want to specialize in fertility. She is the author of the book, “Fertility Secrets: What Your Doctor Didn’t Tell You About Baby-Making.”
- Alan Ma, “From concept to implementation, smart solutions in the field of road ecology” — A junior at Jesuit High School in Portland, Ma is passionate about bringing youth action in solving environmental challenges of today’s world and is invested in making change through innovative engineering, especially along the crossroads of humanity and nature. Ma also works with the youth-led environmental-changemaker organization NextGen Innovators and said he hopes to inspire the next generation of youth and focus on developing a launchpad of community resources as a network of the finest thinkers, problem-solvers and storytellers.
The Camas youth leading this year’s event include Wood, the head of the promotions team; Pauline Do, the leader of the group’s speaker curation team; and Madhuri Paras, head of the logistics team.
