TeenVogue: Everything You Missed From Yesterday's TEDxTeen Conference

By Kate Dwyer, January 17, 2016

Image credit: Getty

We’ve all seen a TED Talk at some point. In under 18 minutes, an expert talks about what he or she has learned over the years, and how audience members can apply that wisdom to their own lives. The TED movement has picked up so much momentum over the past decade that independently-sponsored TEDx events have begun to pop up all over the world. TEDxTeen is undoubtedly one of the biggest, offering young people a platform to exchange ideas and empower one another. This year, the conference was held in London, and over the course of seven hours, 10 speakers and five performers took the stage at indigO2 at The O2 arena to talk about their experiences and share advice.

Meltem Avcil, a former refugee at Yarl’s Wood detainee camp in the United Kingdom, reminded us that “you are part of this story.” Connor Grooms taught us how to learn anything in 30 days. Konstantin Avdienko talked about creating a device that harnesses water vapor from the air to provide clean drinking water to developing countries. Kash Gaines moved the audience with the stories behind his street dance videos, including one about a young man who performs on the corner where his brother was killed in a car accident. Since the first TEDxTeen eight years ago, the event has featured over 100 speakers, garnered over 14 million views, had viewers from 150 countries tune in live and most impressively, this year alone, the event generated 300 million Twitter impressions. Halfway through the event, it was the sixth most trending hashtag. But while there were a lot of great stories shared, inventor Ann Makosinski, model Mariah Idrissi, and research scientist Ciara Judge shared valuable pieces of career advice.

Because Ann Makosinski's parents encouraged her to create her own toys as a child, she’s been inventing things since Pre-K. “Creativity for me was born out of a necessity,” she said during her TEDx talk. When Ann was in 10th grade, she was inspired to create her most famous invention by a friend in the Philippines who told her she was failing in school because she didn’t have electricity. Ann’s solution? A flashlight running on heat from the human hand. This past year, she expanded the concept to create the eDrink, a coffee mug that converts thermodynamic energy from hot drinks into electricity to charge your phone. But as a kid-inventor-turned-college-student, she stressed, “Just because you’re in college and that you’re a university student does not mean that’s the only thing you are… Pursue whatever you want to do — you can start when you’re in high school, you can do whatever you want. Anything you dream of is possible but you have to start and work on it even if it’s just 20 minutes a day.” So that excuse that you can’t do something because you’re still in high school? Not an excuse. As a college student who got her first flip phone — not an iPhone – this year, she explained, “Disconnecting helps you connect and create more.”

Mariah Idrissi – the first hijab-wearing Muslim model to be featured in a major fashion campaign — spoke honestly about her post-H&M experiences, explaining that while yes, the fashion industry is trying to diversify (citing Dolce and Gabbana’s recent line of hijabs and abayas), it can still do better. But the biggest takeaway from her talk? Be yourself, work hard, and help others. By being herself, Mariah was able to take the industry by storm and cause tangible change for so many women. She cites one time when this change was particularly evident. A Moroccan woman approached her to take a picture, and told her about a time she was shopping in Paris — where hijabs are banned in certain places – and noticed a girl working in H&M wearing a hijab. “The girl was like, ‘yes, since that girl who did that H&M campaign, everyone working in store that wanted to wear hijab is now being allowed to wear hijab.’” When Teen Vogue caught up with Mariah after her talk, she said, “The level of confidence in Muslim women has improved since the campaign and they don’t feel that hijab restricts them in pursuing their goals.”

Ciara Judge – who wore pajamas during her talk – discussed how she and two friends transformed her spare bedroom into a science lab and researched the bacterium rhizobium on the yield of wheat, oats, and barley. The girls – who won the Google Science Fair in 2014 – built a homemade incubator out of fish boxes, a thermostat, and a lightbulb. After months of painstaking experimentation, they showed that rhizobium cut the germination period of oats and barley in half. Then they planted thousands of seeds in her garden, and the bacteria-treated barley yielded 75% more than expected. Because the population will reach 9 billion by 2050, and need 50% more food, she hopes that her innovation will help combat the global food crisis.

Ciara also wants our generation to be known as “Generation Y-Not,” instead of being assigned just a letter. When Teen Vogue asked her about it, she said, “I hear young people all the time say things like 'everything has been discovered by now.' But that's simply not the case. We found something completely new, and the reason we and not a high tech lab found it is that we asked the question 'why not.' If all teenagers ask that question, if all teenagers refuse to accept the word ‘no’ and continually challenge the boundaries, we can create a generation of discovery, a generation of people who ask 'why not?” Now that’s an “idea worth spreading”. .

Read full article HERE:
www.teenvogue.com/story/tedxteen-2016-london-highlights-ciara-judge-ann-makosinski