Meet an IndyKids Reporter: Rosell Rivas
By Juan Cortes, age 10 Why did you decide to become an IndyKids reporter? Because it seemed like an interesting experience to become a journalist and be introduced to new topics that I haven’t heard about. I’ve had a lot of fun experiences, and I’ve learnt a lot,...
Who Am I?
By Orik Ehren, age 13 and IndyKids Staff I was born on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, and I died on August 5, 2019, in New York. My family was part of the Great Migration, the mass movement of African Americans from the rural South to urban areas in the North to...
“My Camera Is a Weapon,” IndyKids Reporter Meets 13-year-old Palestinian Journalist Janna Jihad
By Lanyie Rhodes, age 13 Janna Tamimi, also known as Janna Jihad, is a 13-year-old Palestinian girl who is a reporter from the small town of Nabi Saleh in the occupied West Bank. She started reporting as a journalist when she was 7 years old, after her friend and...
The Yangtze Giant Softshell Turtle Is One of the World’s Rarest Turtles
By Esteban Guerra, Age 8 The Yangtze giant softshell turtle is one of the world’s rarest turtles. The Yangtze is native to eastern and southern China and northern Vietnam. It is also known by the names of Red River giant softshell turtle, the Shanghai softshell...
“The Biggest Bully I’ve Ever Had to Deal With.” – How Congresswomen Stood Up to President Trump
By Hudson, age 13, and IndyKids Staff As students begin another year, many schools take steps to prevent bullying and safeguard the health and well-being of their students. Yet, unfortunately, bullying isn’t just a problem on the playground, but it’s an issue in many...
Human Rights Groups Call on China to Stop Separating Uyghur and Other Turkic Muslim Children and Return Them to Their Families
By Clara Wong and May Mcgrath age 10 and IndyKids Staff Pronunciation for Uyghur- WEE-gor Human Rights Watch has called on the Chinese government to immediately release all Uyghur children being held in so-called child welfare institutions and boarding schools in...
The Alcatraz Occupation: A Powerful Symbol of Indigenous Resistance and Leadership
By Lanyie Rhodes, age 12 and IndyKids Staff In November 1969, Richard Oakes, a Mohawk from New York, led a protest with around 80 Native Americans/Indigenous peoples to the island of Alcatraz about 1.25 miles offshore from San Francisco. The group was made up of...
How the Black Campus Movement of the 1960s Transformed Higher Education in the United States
By Michael Hirschfield, age 11 and IndyKids Staff Between 1965 and 1972, Black student activists held protests at thousands of colleges and universities to demand more equality in their schools. Known as the Black Campus Movement (BCM), they were campaigning for...
The Protest Movement Calling for an End to the War in Vietnam
By Aisha Tabala, Age 11 The Vietnam War began on November 1, 1955. The United States started sending troops to South Vietnam in 1965 to fight the Viet Cong, the pro-North force in South Vietnam, which was armed by North Vietnam and supported by the communist nations,...
Muhammad Ali’s Fight for Peace and Justice
By Gibran Freilla Williams, age 8 and Anand Jaureguilorda, age 15 Muhammad Ali was a boxer who died in 2016 at the age of 74. He was a three-time heavyweight champion and gold medallist in the 1960 Olympics for boxing. But he was also an activist who fought for civil...
The Stonewall Uprising
By Ella Marnin age 10 The 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising was on June 28. The uprising started when police raided a gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, located in Greenwich Village, New York. Back then, bartenders used to refuse to serve gay people. Some places...
“What We Do, We Do from Our Hearts”: How the Young Lords Addressed Inequality in New York City
By Rosell Rivas, age 11 and IndyKids Staff The Young Lords were originally a street gang but turned into a grassroots revolutionary civil and human rights organization in the summer of 1969. They were mostly made up of young Puerto Rican men and women living in East...
Trump Pushes to Allow Oil Drilling in the Pristine Arctic Wildlife Refuge
By Jesus Hernandez, Age 11 The Trump administration wants to allow companies to drill for oil in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), home to the largest untapped oil reserves in the United States, by the end of 2019. The Bureau of Land Management...
The Green New Deal: Why We Can’t Fight Climate Change Without Addressing Inequality
By Tully Comfort age 12 and Indykids Staff In February of this year, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bill Markey introduced in Congress a Green New Deal (GND) resolution to take on inequality while eliminating climate pollution, by creating jobs with higher...
“The People Can Do It When They Unite”: A New Chapter in Puerto Rico’s History Calls for Greater Democracy
By Yael Mora, age 11 and Indykids Staff It’s been two years since Hurricane Maria devastated the Carribean island and U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, making history as one of the worst and deadliest natural disasters ever recorded in the region. Amid rebuilding efforts...
Meet an IndyKids Reporter, Samaira Bunbury
By Onika Ehren, age 12 Samaira is a creative and inquisitive 12-year-old journalist who has been writing for IndyKids since the IndyKids Summer Camp 2018. In addition to writing articles, she has also designed political cartoons and produced a podcast looking at...
“It’s Like Someone Has Taken a Part of My Heart That Was There for a Long, Long Time.” A 12-Year-Old Reflects on the Experience of Immigration Officers Separating His Family.
By Victor, age 12 Every week, my family would go to the movies. We watched Sharknado 1, 2 and 3. We used to get popcorn, nacho cheese chips and Coke slushies. It was exciting, something I looked forward to. But two years ago, everything changed. One day, after my dad...
New NYC Styrofoam Ban Will Help Reduce Climate Change and Plastic Waste
By Aishwarya Vedula, age 12 Everywhere we go, we are surrounded by products made of plastic. This is a huge problem for our environment because these materials contribute both to littering the ocean and the earth, as well as to climate change. According to the science...
“Censorship Leaves Us in the Dark”: How Banned Books Week Illuminates the Right to Read
By Lee Walker Watson, age 13 Every year, in the last week of September, books that have been banned in certain communities are publicized by the coalition of librarians, educators and publishing companies who organize Banned Books Week. “Banned books” are books that...
Afropunk: The “No Hate” Movement That Celebrates African Culture
By Samaira Bunbury, age 11 Every summer, around 70,000 people of various ethnicities, shades, abilities and genders celebrate the annual Afropunk Festival. With a program full of dance, music, film and fashion, it’s an all-arts festival that embraces African-centric...
News Briefs for Climate Week
World Leaders Meet in NYC for U.N. Climate Summit by IndyKids Staff On September 23, world leaders met in New York City to attend a special United Nations summit on climate change. The summit aimed to put in place realistic plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by...
Seesaws Unite Children Across the U.S.-Mexico Border
By Jessie Mai Mitnick, age 11 Three neon pink seesaws were installed through the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday, July 28, for about 30 minutes, with the intent to gather kids of all ages to have fun, to be happy and to have conversations across the border — a border...
New Report Reveals Child Labor on U.S. Farms
By Dayanara Hernandez, age 14 A recent article by Karen Coates and Valeria Fernández published in Pacific Standard, “The Young Hands That Feed Us,” revealed the hidden reality of child labor in the United States. A 2014 Childhood Agricultural Injury Survey estimated...
Someday You Could Be a Scientist Like Sajan Saini
By Ben Wakley, age 12 Sajan Saini is a scientist and professor who specializes in photonics, a special technology that manipulates or changes light for different purposes. He received his doctoral degree in materials science at MIT in 2004 and has worked with the MIT...
Who Am I?
By Jessie Mai Mitnick, age 11 Former President Barack Obama thought of me as “the Godmother of the civil rights movement.” I was born in Richmond, Virginia, on March 24, 1912. I was raised by my mother, Fanny, who was a nurse, and my father, James, who was a building...
Save the Earth by Saving the Ocean
By Eliot Pascoe, age 7 for the LA Climate Strike, September 20 2019
Getting Wild With… The Jaguar
Habitat Loss Threatens the Mighty Jaguars By Leah Romero, age 9 The jaguar is a magnificent feline that conservation groups say will face extinction in the near future unless humans change their behavior now. The word “jaguar” comes from the indigenous Tupian word...
Indykids Podcast: The Growing Movement of Japanese Americans Protesting Immigration Detention in the U.S.
During WWII, the United States government incarcerated about 120,000 innocent Japanese, Japanese American and Japanese Latin American people during World War II because Japan was seen as its enemy at the time. Now, former Japanese American and Japanese Latin American...
Indykids Podcast: “You are not helpless. You are not powerless” – How Everyday New Yorkers are Supporting and Providing Sanctuary for Immigrants
Podcast by Hudson, age 13, and Aisha Tabala, age 11 IndyKids reporters Hudson and Aisha spoke with the prominent immigration activist and executive director of the New Sanctuary Coalition, Ravi Ragbir about the challenges facing immigrants in the United States today,...
Indykids Podcast: “If I were you, I would not want to be me”- An 11-year-old shares with his peers the impact ICE had on separating his family
Victor in many ways is just like any other 11-year-old boy, he loves playing video games and going outside, but there's one big difference— For the past two years he has been separated from his father, after he was arrested by immigration officials at their home one...
Indykids Podcast: “Can we reimagine a world where youth prisons don’t exist?”
"We don't think about the experiences our young people go through before they come into contact with the system." - Hernan Carvente When Hernan Carvente was just 16 years old he was sentenced to six years in prison. He spent four years incarcerated in a maximum...
Under Attack: The Press in the Era of Trump
By Finn Tenzin Hamre-Myers, Age, 14 Attacks on the media have become commonplace under the leadership of President Donald Trump and have become a signature part of his administration. Insults such as “fake news,” “enemy of the people” and “failing” are used to...
How the Equality Act Will Ban Discrimination Against LGBTQIA+ People in the U.S.
How the Equality Act Will Ban Discrimination Against LGBTQIA+ People in the U.S. By Lukas Azcurrain age, 12 The Equality Act is a new bill proposed by Congressmembers David Cicilline (D-RI) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Susan Collins...
Equal Pay Day Highlights the Gender Pay Gap
By NYLA ALCANTARA 11 years old Equal Pay Day started in 1996 by the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE). It is a day that highlights the issue of unequal pay between men and women. This issue is called the gender pay gap because of the difference between what...
Students Strike 4 Climate: Young People Leading the Way for Action on Climate Change
By Lila Katch, age 14 “You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes.” - Greta Thunberg On March 15, 2019, about 1.4 million students across the world skipped their classes to protest the growing...
Mozambique’s Devastating Cyclones Reveal the Inequalities of Climate Change
By Eleanor Hedges Duroy, age 15 On March 14, 2019, Tropical Cyclone Idai hit southeast Africa, making landfall in Mozambique and causing floods and heavy rain in neighboring Zimbabwe and Malawi. According to the United Nations, it was one of the worst-ever...
It Was Just a Normal Day at School. Then an Immigration Truck Showed Up
By Yael Mora, age 11 On a Thursday in early March, I was in math class listening to my teacher, Mr. Cheesman, give a lesson on how to convert mass, weights and volume. Then, at lunch, I played chicken with my friends. It was just a regular day at my school, P.S....
Un Libro a la Vez: How This Revolutionary Librarian and Puppeteer Brought Spanish Books to the Public Library
By AISHA TABALA, age 10 It’s not a secret that Nueva York, New York, is one of the most diverse cities in the world, and Latinos make up a major part of its rich culture. Thanks to the fearless Latina, Pura Belpré, the 25% of the population that speaks Spanish in the...
Navajo Activists Take the Lead to Address the Water Crisis in Their Communities
By JUAN CORTES Age 10 The Navajo Nation is the largest Native American reservation in the United States, sprawled across Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. Behind this vast and scenic land, surrounded with beautiful reddish-orange rocks and mountains, and a community with...
New York City Passes Its Own Green New Deal
By Indykids Staff New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a new and ambitious plan for the city to do its part to reduce global warming and climate change. The Climate Mobilization Act, which comes into effect May 17, aims to enact the largest carbon reduction...
Sudan’s Pro-Democracy Revolution Faces Its Next Challenge
By Indykids Staff After about four months of continued protests, the Sudanese people managed to oust President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, whose brutal 30-year rule was marred by corruption, war and famine in the East African nation. This is the longest-running protest...
The History of May Day: Remembering the Ones Who Fought for Workers’ Rights
Jesus Hernandez, age 10 May 1 is known as May Day. May Day has two very different meanings: In some places, May Day is a holiday for welcoming the spring; on the other hand, it is recognized as a day for celebrating workers, highlighting the problems that low-waged...
Survivors of WWII Japanese Internment Camps Stage Peaceful Protest to End Immigration Detention
By Amin Adem, age 13 A group of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World World II (WWII) staged a peaceful protest at a family immigration detention center in South Texas, because they don’t want the history of injustice to repeat itself. During WWII, the United...
California Moves to Ban Race-Based Hair Discrimination
By Lucia Mejia Cardenas, age 11 On April 22, 2019, the California Senate passed a bill banning all race-based hair discrimination. What this bill essentially means is that people are no longer allowed to be denied employment, promotions or access to school because of...
Scientists Move Forest to Try to Save Monarch Butterflies
By Miette Windsor 8 years old Every year, monarch butterflies migrate from northeastern United States and Canada to hibernate in the oyamel fir trees in the mountains of Central Mexico. Over the past 20 years the number of monarch butterflies hibernating in Mexico has...
Threat of Rising Sea Level as Scientists Discover a Giant Hole in Antarctic Glacier
By Rosell Rivas, age 9 According to a NASA study published in January 2019, Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier has a giant underwater hole. A glacier is a large sheet of ice or snow that can be on land or the sea. About 98% of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice...
“Microplastics Are Being Found Absolutely Everywhere”
'By: Nayleen Cortes, age 10 A series of new research released this year reveals the impact that microplastics are having in the world, from oceans and rivers to now even the air because of rain. When this plastic litter, such as plastic bags, straws or bottles, breaks...
Meet an IndyKids Reporter: Lucia Mejia Cardenas
By Leah Romero, age 9 Lucia Mejia Cardenas is an 11-year-old IndyKids reporter who started writing for IndyKids in 2018. She has written stories on the first Native American women to be elected to the United States Congress, as well as racial discrimination with...
Mexico’s Vaquita Now on the Brink of Extinction Because of Poachers
VaquitaBy Leah Romero, age 9 The vaquita, one of Mexico’s national animals, once roamed the Sea of Cortez, also known as the Gulf of California, by the thousands. But now they’re endangered and close to extinction. The Mexican vaquita (a.k.a. the panda of the sea, due...
Who Am I?
By Mireynna Villar, Age 13 I was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, 1862. I am an African-American journalist, feminist and abolitionist who became arguably the most famous black woman in America. Scroll down for the answer! ...
How the Government Approaches Climate Change
By Lila Katch, age 14
A Crime or Saving Lives? Increased Crackdown on Humanitarian Aid Workers at the U.S.-Mexico Border
By Audren Hedges Duroy, age 12 From family separation and increased deportations to federal government shutdowns over border wall funding, national and local policies surrounding migration have been constantly shifting since 2017, when President Trump took office. As...
News Briefs
Political and Humanitarian Crisis in Venezuela Grows as U.S.-Backed Opposition Groups Push for Regime Change Venezuela's political and humanitarian crisis is worsening as the United States imposes sanctions in an effort to unseat the socialist president, Nicolás...
Underwater Robot Delivers 100,000 Baby Coral in an Attempt to Save a Dying Great Barrier Reef
By Nicolle Berroa, age 11 and Indykids Staff In late 2018, an underwater robot named LarvalBot delivered 100,000 baby coral larvae into damaged reef systems in the Great Barrier Reef off the northeast coast of Australia. The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral...
What Does the L.A. Teacher Strike Teach Us?
By Andrew Garcia, age 11 and Indykids Staff After a historic six-day strike, Los Angeles teachers won their demands for smaller class sizes, a nurse for every public school, a librarian for every middle and high school in the district, a six percent pay increase and a...
Environmental Racism: How Communities of Color Are Disproportionately Impacted by Pollution
By Charles De Lange, Age 11 Research shows that communities of color are more likely to be exposed to pollution than predominantly White communities—a situation referred to as environmental injustice. A new report published in Proceedings of the National Academy of...
Black Teen Wrestler Forced to Cut His Dreadlocks
By Lucia Mejia Cardenas, age 10 In late December 2018, Andrew Johnson, a Black teenage wrestler from New Jersey, was told that in order to participate in his match he would have to cut off his dreadlocks. Alan Maloney, a white referee, gave him 90 seconds to decide....
Dramatic Drop in Insects Threatens a “Catastrophic Collapse of Nature’s Ecosystems”
By: Amzad Ali, age 15 A recent study published in the journal Biological Conservation shows a steep and steady decline in insects. The study says that more than 40 percent of insect species are disappearing globally and a third of species are endangered. The main...
Tidying the Ocean with a Seabin!
By Ellinor Iversen, Age 6 The Seabin is a machine which is trying to take trash out of the sea! It was invented by two surfers in Perth, Australia. It works like a vacuum cleaner, but in the sea. This is important because all of the tiny plastics can go into coral...
SpaceX Test Fires a Rocket That Could Send Humans to Mars
By Raya el Hajjar, age 12 SpaceX is a private rocket and spacecraft company. Its goal is to get humans to Mars, the moon and beyond using reusable rockets. Right now SpaceX is working on its new engine, the Raptor, which was test-fired in Texas in early February. The...
“Sí, Se Puede, Yes We Can” Women Civil Rights Leaders Throughout History
By Nicole Mariano, age:12, Amin Adem, age 13, Madison Smith, age 11, Simone Oduola, age 11, Mary Ryan, Age 11, Chloe Corneal age 11 years old, Nylu Bridges Bernshtayn, age 13, Nicolle Berroa age 12 Dolores Huerta, the Force Behind the United Farm Workers Union By...
Pursuit of Freedom: Exhibition Illuminates Brooklyn’s Anti-Slavery Movement
By Rene Emmanuel Ambroise, Age 10 “History is entirely based on interpretation of evidence, and sometimes to reveal the truth of the past you have to be willing to go back and see if the stories we tell about people and movements really reveal the full accuracy of...
Ingrid Silva Is Dancing Her Way to Changing the World
By Jessie Mai Mitnick, age 11 Ingrid Silva is the First Ballerina with the Dance Theatre of Harlem and a women’s empowerment leader. Growing up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Ingrid was an avid swimmer, with aspirations to swim professionally. However, this changed, at 8...
JR Challenges Borders Through Street Art
By Izzy Weitzman, Age 13 JR is one of the most influential street artists in the world, known for using his art as a medium to advocate for social justice. He began as a graffiti artist on the streets of Paris. One day he and his friends found a camera in a subway...
Meet an IndyKids Reporter: Nylu Bridges Bernshtayn
By Omolara Falebita, age 11 Can you tell us a bit about yourself and where you’re from? I was born and raised in Flatbush, Brooklyn. I am an eighth grader at the Institute for Collaborative Education. Outside of school, I skate for the Gotham Girls Junior Roller...
Personal Essay: How the Culture of Beauty Pageants and Mainstream Representations of Beauty Oppress Women
By Ana Farkhondeh, age 13 Earlier this year I wrote an argumentative essay for school critiquing beauty pageants. I chose this topic because as a proud feminist, I strongly believe that beauty pageants are demeaning toward women, and they endanger young girls’ mental...
Someday You Could Be a Human Rights Activist Like Janvieve Williams Comrie
By Lucia Mejia Cardenas, age 11 Janvieve Williams Comrie is an Afro-Latina activist living in the Bronx. Not only has she worked with several human rights organizations, including the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights Regional Office for Central America,...
Getting Wild with the Leatherback Turtle
By Nicolle Berroa, age 11 Leatherback sea turtles are one of the world’s largest pelagic turtles found in the open ocean. The thousands of tiny bone plates on its back gives it its leathery look. They are an endangered and vulnerable species due to coastal habitat...
Who Am I?
By Arek Lambert, Age 11 I was born on December 13, 1903, in Norfolk, Virginia, to Georgianna Ross Baker and Blake Baker. I had two brothers, Prince Baker and Blake Curtis Baker, and one sister, Margaret Odessa Baker. I was a civil rights activist. I was one of the...
I Can’t Fly
By Omolara Falebita age, 11 Donald trump is trying to pass unjust laws and terrorize America by flying without anything holding him back. However, there are multiple things keeping him from doing that. For example, the system of checks and balances, the courts, the...
Youth Climate Lawsuit in Limbo as the U.S. Government Puts Up Roadblocks
By Sophia Rothman, age 14 In 2015, 21 young people filed a lawsuit (Juliana et al. v. United States) against the U.S. government. Their goal? To force the government to do more in the fight against climate change. These young plaintiffs are claiming that the...
California Monarch Butterfly Population Down 86 Percent in 2018
Each fall, thousands of monarch butterflies travel from their summer homes in the northern U.S. and Canada to their winter homes in California and Mexico. But when scientists did the annual Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count in November 2018, they found that the...
Nancy Pelosi Elected Speaker of the House of Representatives in Congress
As Democrats take control of the House of Representatives in 2019, they have elected Representative Nancy Pelosi of California as speaker, returning her the honor of being the first woman ever to hold the post, after eight years of Republicans controlling the House....
The War in Yemen Is the World’s Worst Man-Made Humanitarian Disaster
By Talia Haveshush, age 9and Indykids Staff The United Nations says the war in Yemen is the world's worst man-made humanitarian disaster. The political divisions within Yemen are complex, but the conflict has essentially become a “proxy war” between Iran (who support...
“We Will Not Be Erased”: LGBTQIA Community Challenges Trump’s Assault on the Rights of the Transgender Community
By: Amzad Ali, Age 15 The Trump administration sparked a heated discussion about transgender individuals in early October, when a memo was leaked by the government which narrowed the definition of gender. In the memo, the government states that there are only two...
Who Is Jair Bolsonaro and Why Is He Called the “Trump of Brazil”?
By Lukas Azcurrain age: 12 and Indykids staff Jair Bolsonaro is the new president of Brazil. With strong backing from the military, leaders of evangelical religious groups and the right-wing establishment, he is raising concerns about the future of civil liberties,...
Poverty, Instability and U.S Foreign Policy Helped Create the Migrant Caravan
By Rene Emmanuel Ambroise, Age 10 There is a migrant caravan made up of around 7,000 people on its way from Central...
Meet Ruth Buffalo, the First Native American Democratic Woman Elected to the North Dakota Legislature
By Abigail Romero, age 10 Ruth Buffalo made history in North Dakota after she was elected as the first Native American Democratic woman to be elected to the state’s Legislature. Buffalo is passionate about reducing the cost of healthcare, improving the state’s...
The New Phase of Ear Hustle: A Podcast That Now Talks About Life Inside and Outside Prison
By Nazir Mobley, age 11 Earlonne Woods is co-creator, co-producer and co-host of a podcast called Ear Hustle, which tells stories about life inside the San Quentin prison in Northern California. In 1997, while in his early twenties, Woods was sentenced to 31 years to...
Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib
Ilhan Omar By Onika Ehren, age 11 and Indykids team Ilhan Omar's journey to politics was not very easy. Her family fled the civil war in Somalia and went to a refugee camp in Kenya before finally migrating to the United States. Omar wants to rebel against the politics...
Debra Haaland and Sharice Davids
By Lucia Mejia Cardenas, age 10 Debra Haaland Debra Haaland ran for Congress representing New Mexico and is a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe. She was inspired to do so by her hard-working and dedicated grandmother. Her grandmother sparked a light in Haaland and...
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley
By Samaira Bunbury, age 11 Ayanna Pressley Who is Ayanna Pressley? Well, she was a senior aide to Congressmember Joseph Kennedy and political director to Senator John Kerry, before becoming the first African-American woman elected to the Boston City Council in 2009....
Record Number of Women Are Sworn In to U.S. Congress
By Eleanor Hedges Duroy, age 15 In the 2018 midterm elections*, a record-breaking number of women were elected to the United States Congress, and this month, they were officially sworn in. Midterm elections are often significant because they can change the balance of...
Kids Doing Their Bit to Reduce Waste and Reduce Climate Change
By Orik Ehren age 13 years Though some, including U.S. President Donald Trump, might scoff at climate change, scientists predict it will cause catastrophic devastation to people and the planet in the not too distant future, if we don’t take significant actions to...
I Am Raised by Two Dads, and I Am the Same as Any Other Kid
By William Lepow-Beauregard, Age 9 The other day, I watched It with my parents—we were really scared. The following week, we went out for dinner at the Lobster Pound in my neighborhood, where we ate lobsters. The week after, we went to a parade, where we saw...
Meet IndyKids Reporter: Audren Hedges Duroy
By Jessie Mai Mitnick, age 11 Audren Hedges Duroy is a 12-year-old IndyKids reporter who's been writing for IndyKids since 2015. Audren loves to write because he sees it as the best way to get your opinions heard. Writing also helps Audren organize his thoughts...
“We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis:” Greta Thunberg demands Climate Justice Now!
Fifteen-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in December 2018. My name is Greta Thunberg. I am 15 years old, and I’m from Sweden. I speak on behalf of Climate Justice Now! Many people say that Sweden is just...
Someday You Could Be a Food Journalist Like Katherine Hernandez
By Omolara Falebita, age 11 Katherine Hernandez is an award-winning Afro-Latina multimedia journalist. Her stories have appeared in NPR Food, PRI’s The World, Gothamist, Edible Manhattan, Feet in 2 Worlds, Edible Brooklyn and Harlem Focus. She is currently completing...
“Deportation Separates Love”
By Lucia Mejia Cardenas, age 10 "Deportation separates love" Mom and daughter are holding hands across the border wall.
New Robot Skins Can Make Objects and Humans Move in New and Exciting Ways
By William Lepow-Beauregard, Age 9 and Indykids Staff Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio and her team at Yale University have created new robot skins which allow users to turn everyday objects into robots. Kramer-Bottiglio says that if you put a robot skin on an object, “it can...
Europe Bans Single Use Plastic to Save Oceans and Fish
By Audren Hedges Duroy age 12 In October 2018 the European Parliament (EP) introduced a ban on single-use plastics like straws, disposable water bottles, and plastic cutlery. According to the EP these plastic products make up 70% of all marine litter. European nations...
“This is our Future”- Australian Students Go on Strike To Demand Action on Climate Change
By Amélie Kokolios and Harley Bongiorno, age 7 Thousands of Australian students missed school for one day in late 2018, to ask their government to take more action against climate change. The students want the government to get rid of coal energy and switch to 100...
RED PANDAS: Super Cute But Under Threat of Extinction
By: Abigail Romero, age 10 You may have seen the red panda—they’re very cute. But did you also know that they’re an endangered species? There are fewer than 10,000 red pandas in the wild due to habitat loss, accidental traps, zoos and poaching. Pandas are poached in...
Who am I?
By AnaLouisa Farkhondeh, age 12 I was born on November 30, 1924 in New York City. “When I die, I want to be remembered as a woman who lived in the twentieth century and who dared to be a catalyst of change. I don't want to be remembered as the first black woman who...
Indykids featured on NPR!
NPR's sports show, Only A Game featured our story on 73-year-old marathon runner, Jillian Lazaridis. For this piece Indykids teamed up with The Grandparents StoryLab - a new intergenerational storytelling project that connects New York City's youngest and oldest...
California Wildfires Exacerbated by Climate Change
By Amira Pinkston, age 12 This summer, California saw some of its worst wildfires in history, and scientists believe climate change is the cause. “California has had multi-years of drought, this is the kind of toxic combination that can create very...
The Last Straw
By Lucia Mejia Cardenas, age 10 On average, people in the United States dispose of 500 million plastic straws each day. Plastic straws and plastic utensils can’t be recycled. The biggest obstacle to recycling plastic straws is their size: they slip...
Autumn Spice Granola
By IndyKids Staff Fall is here. Get toasty with your own homemade autumn spice granola! Ingredients 4 c. rolled oats ½ tbsp. cinnamon ½ tbsp. nutmeg 1 tsp. allspice 1/8 c. flax seeds 1/8 c. sesame seeds, unhulled ¼ c. raw sunflower seeds ¼ c. raw pumpkin seeds ¼ c....
Getting Wild with the Bengal Tiger
By Zachary Wright Bengal tigers are an endangered species due to the effects of poaching and deforestation. They can be found in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal. Bengal tigers are apex predators, which means they’re at the top of the food chain, but humans...
The Path to Voting Rights for 1.4 Million in Florida
By INDYKIDS STAFF This midterm election, voters in Florida have the chance to give back voting rights to people convicted of nonviolent felonies and who have finished their time in prison. Ten percent of all adults in the state, up to 1.4 million people, cannot...
