State Honoree

Esha Mishra, 14, of Schererville, Ind., an eighth-grader at Forest Ridge Academy, organized a collection drive at her school that yielded thousands of school supplies for poverty-stricken children in Nepal. Esha visited the central Asian country last spring with her family, and was stunned to see the poverty there. "The kids barely had anything!" she said. Two weeks after Esha returned home, a major earthquake devastated Nepal. "I thought, if these kids had so little before the earthquake, they must be in even worse conditions now," she said. "I knew I had to do something."

Esha brainstormed ideas with her family, and created a plan to collect school supplies in her school community for kids in Nepal. After obtaining the support of her principal, she set up a collection table at her school and began visiting classrooms to make PowerPoint presentations about her campaign. Before long, Esha had collected thousands of items, including pencils, pens, books, crayons, paints, notebooks and markers. The supplies were packaged and shipped to a thousand-student elementary school in Nepal. Esha said she is determined to send shipments to the school every year. "By providing this school with supplies, the children will have the tools they need to get a better education," she said.