Growing up on a remote Indonesian island with fewer than 100 residents, Ara’s world was shaped by the ocean. Today, she’s inspiring youth across Indonesia to become ocean stewards and has just released her first environmental film.

Ara grew up on the Gili Islands, where opportunities were limited and independence came early. Diving became both a way to stay close to the ocean she loved and a way to make ends meet. It was while guiding a tourist on a dive that she first heard about Take Action Lab. She applied, unsure what to expect, and was accepted into one of our early classes.

For Ara, Take Action Lab was transformative. It was the first time she experienced a global learning community that believed deeply in her potential and challenged her to imagine a broader future.

“I met amazing people who became lifelong friends,” she reflects. “I was surrounded by mentors and peers who believed in me, even when I doubted myself. That support made a real difference.”

Through Take Action Lab, Ara developed confidence, leadership skills, and a stronger sense of purpose. The experience pushed her to think beyond survival and toward impact. It also opened doors she had never imagined, including attending the Villars Institute Summit in Switzerland as part of the first Tilting Futures delegation, joining young leaders from around the world to engage with global decision-makers on sustainability and environmental action.

Since completing Take Action Lab, Ara has continued to build on that foundation. She works as a dive instructor and supports project management for an ocean-focused organization in Indonesia. She also applied for and was accepted into the Darwin 200 Fellowship, joining a scientific voyage to Tasmania focused on humpback whale research.

That voyage became the subject of Ara’s first environmental short film of a three part series. The film showcases stunning marine life and landscapes, but it also reflects the confidence and clarity Ara gained through her Take Action Lab experience.

“Being in that environment pushed me to grow, to try more, and to care more deeply about the impact I can have on others,” she says. “It reminded me that we’re not alone in the work we do.”

Today, Ara is still living the values she strengthened through Take Action Lab: leadership rooted in community, purpose, and care for the planet. 

She is working on the second and third parts of her documentary series and looks forward to sharing the rest of the films with her community.

From a tiny island to a global community, Ara’s story shows what becomes possible when young people are given the opportunity, support, and belief they need to turn passion into lasting impact.

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From local classrooms to global stages, Tilting Futures alumni are putting their purpose into practice. Whether they’re advancing civic innovation, reimagining education, or shaping peacebuilding efforts across borders, these young leaders are creating impact that ripples far beyond their programs.

Meet Brooke, Fowzan, and Fatima — three changemakers turning vision into action, all around the world.

A Glimpse Into a Student-Led Apprenticeship Project

Fowzan Haq, a 20-year-old student from India with a technology background, joined Take Action Lab: Civic Innovation with one driving goal: to learn how to use innovation as a tool for social change. During his apprenticeship at Green Riders, a South African electric motorbike company focused on economic development, he noticed a challenge others overlooked: employees were disengaged during traditional, lecture-based training.

Instead of accepting the status quo, Fowzan applied the principles he was learning through Take Action Lab: agency, systems thinking, and real-world problem solving. He pitched a gamified, self-guided mobile training app, and then he built it. The CEO was so impressed that the company adopted it organization-wide. They now train faster, track employee progress in real time, and have higher staff-engagement. 

Fowzan’s story is a powerful example of what happens when young people are equipped not just with knowledge, but with purpose, confidence, and the tools to lead. Now, Fowzan has hands-on experience driving real social innovation – a skill that will help him create more positive change going forward. This is exactly the kind of impact you and our collective community of philanthropic partners make possible.

Brooke Found Her Voice — Across Borders and Against the Current

Brooke Mumbi joined the virtual Academy cohort from her bedroom in Kenya, eager to build global connections and stretch her thinking. A year later, she traveled to Cape Town, South Africa, for Take Action Lab, where she apprenticed with a nonprofit focused on refugee and immigrant law. Working at the intersection of justice and migration, she gained firsthand experience navigating complex systems — and a clearer sense of her purpose.

Now a Political Science and Economics major at Middlebury College, Brooke is exploring the policy and economic levers that drive social change. This summer, she interned in Global Accessories and Licensing at New Balance while living with a Tilting Futures alum family in Massachusetts. This spring, she stepped onto the TEDx stage as Middlebury’s student speaker with a talk titled Swimming Against the Current — a moving reflection on staying true to your path, even when it feels like the world is pulling you in another direction.

Brooke’s journey is proof that when young people are equipped with the tools, confidence, and community to lead, they rise. Her story — and the ripples of impact she’s creating — are possible because of the support of our global network.

From Cape Town to Central Asia: One Student’s Path to Peacebuilding

Fatima Baimakhanova‘s journey toward purpose and impact began with a question. She joined Take Action Lab hoping to find clarity — and left with new questions, deeper conviction, and the tools to drive change.

As a Fall 2023 participant in Cape Town, Fatima apprenticed with the Philisa Abafazi Bethu Women’s Center, a grassroots organization supporting women, children, and families. Her work ranged from coordinating logistics for community events like the Annual Bazaar and 16 Days of Activism, to designing afterschool education plans, preparing meals, and restocking clothing supplies. Through it all, she discovered a passion for service — and the power of community-based work to advance civic innovation and dignity.

Now, Fatima is continuing her impact on a global scale. She was recently selected from over 370 applicants across six countries to join the 2025 Preventive Diplomacy Academy, hosted by the UN Regional Centre for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia (UNRCCA). As one of just 48 participants, she’s taking part in a high-level program focused on youth leadership, peacebuilding, and regional cooperation, diving deep into issues like gender equality, cybersecurity, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Fatima credits Take Action Lab with helping her discover her voice as a changemaker and root her activism in real-world experience. Her journey reminds us that purpose isn’t something you find all at once — it’s something you build, with curiosity, courage, and the support of a global community.

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Hear Avneet’s story in her own words — grab some popcorn and watch My first international internship at Cape Town TV on YouTube or below! 

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Siera Sadowski ’23 says reading and writing are among her passions. Growing up, she pursued them in the face of numerous challenges.

Her family relied on food stamps and went through periods without heat in their house.

“But I always had a roof to sleep under,” she says. “Not the poorest of the poor, but very close.”

Her mom wasn’t in the picture, her brother suffered a stroke at 22 (and remains disabled), and her dad found work as a handyman wherever he could. The family moved a lot: Las Vegas. Buffalo. Dallas. Back to Buffalo. Back to Dallas. Siera spent one school year living with a neighbor who had three kids of her own.

No one in her family had attended college, and some never completed high school. But she benefited from strong support from her father, not to mention her own discipline and drive.

“Even though he didn’t go himself, my father instilled in me that a college education is super important,” she says. “I’ve dreamed of attending college since I was a kid.”

This fall Sadowski begins a new chapter, as both a Handler Scholar and a GRADE Scholar at the University of Rochester. The Handler Scholarship is the University’s leading award, giving a more-than-full tuition to Rochester for students who have demonstrated academic excellence and a high financial need. GRADE stands for Guaranteed Rochester Accelerator Degree in Education, offering students a bachelor’s degree from the College and master’s degree from the Warner School of Education in five years.

“Being a Handler Scholar is an incredible feeling, because it means someone believes in me,” says Sadowski. She is considering a double major in English and international relations, and cites the open curriculum as a major reason she was drawn to Rochester.

After her high school graduation, she took a gap year during which she joined a program called Global Citizen Year Fellowship, teaching English to high school students in Ecuador. “It was incredible,” she says. “The kids were amazing, and it solidified my interest in going into education someday.”

She has been writing stories since she was a child.

“Usually, I write a lot of fantasy, because that’s a lot of what I’ve read,” she says. “I’ve written on different fan fiction websites—they’re parodies of existing stories like Hunger Games and Harry Potter.”

More recently, she became a published author in a poetry anthology. “I write everything from really happy dirge-type poetry to really sad feelings-based poetry.”

Sadowski has big plans for her time in Rochester.

“I want to become fluent in two languages—maybe German and Arabic—and I want to study abroad in Germany and maybe the Middle East,” she says. “I want to get involved in the Rochester community. There is such a disparity, and so much poverty. I feel in my soul that I need to help contribute to the solution.”

She counts her blessings every day that she now has the time and the means to earn an education and better herself.

“For most of my life, I’ve been an underdog, always facing some sort of issue,” she says. “To have the financial freedom now, and the freedom of choice to study whatever I want, is just the most incredible feeling in the world.”

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I spent my first 18 years building up my academic profile to get into a prestigious school.

But as a senior in high school, I couldn’t find any schools that would give me the practical experience I desired. I started to care less about prestige and more about finding the right learning environment for what had come to interest me: international development. Compared to my peers – many of whom were applying to 15 or 20 schools each – I started to feel uncertain about my next steps.

Soon after starting my college applications, I learned there was a productive way to tap my growing desire to learn more about international development without going straight to college.

Thanks to some generous financial aid and my bewildered but supportive parents, I chose to take a gap year with Global Citizen Year Fellowship. Through Global Citizen Year, I worked with the Ecuadorian Ministry of the Environment and the German International Development Cooperation in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

The year gave me firsthand experience with natural geography, cultural anthropology and economic development — all topics that I went on to study in college because I knew I needed the formal training to contextualize what I had learned from my experience in Ecuador. During my first year of college, I remember sitting in a geography class where the professor was talking about the Amazon and asked, “Who here knows what a liana (woody vine) is? Who has seen one?” In a lecture hall of 500 students, I was the only one who could raise my hand, and that’s when I knew learning doesn’t come in a one-size-fits-all format.

My gap year became the catalyst for the rest of my education, as it taught me how to make mistakes, ask better questions, become comfortable with the unknown and build the resiliency that the unexpected realities of life demand of you.

More than anything, my gap year taught me how to examine my personal interests at a specific moment in time and design a learning curriculum around them — even if it deviated from what everyone else was doing.

I still went on to a four-year university where the experiences from my gap year pushed me to be more intentional with my undergraduate degree. I was more curious about the world overall, and this desire to learn, paired with critical financial support, led me to explore internships ranging from government to media. By exploring a spectrum of industries that touch international development, this curiosity is what allowed me to ask for opportunities that didn’t yet exist and ultimately helped me find not one, but two dream jobs after college.

Looking back at my academic and professional journey, I didn’t go straight to college after high school, but I don’t feel like a failure.

While I’ve made many missteps, I made decisions that were right for me, not right for society. When I was applying to college, I didn’t have any resources that gave me permission to explore options outside of the traditional path. Thankfully, there are more tools and resources today. For example, Michael B. Horn and Bob Moesta’s book, Choosing College, explains the five reasons people go to college. Their research validates that too many students go to school without a clear understanding of their purpose. My hope is that resources like Choosing College will allow both kids and parents to move away from focusing on the “best” school and instead prioritize why they’re thinking about college in the first place.

This “why” is more important than ever. The latest research shows approximately one-third of students in bachelor’s degree programs change their major at least once, and 41.6% of college students report struggling with anxiety. There are 44.7 million student loan borrowers with a grand total of $1.56 trillion in student debt (as of February 2019). These statistics reflect what I saw in many of my peers. Students don’t know what they want to study and the pressure of determining their life’s path in four years is affecting their mental health.

Almost 20 million students planned to go to college or university in fall 2018. But was that the best choice for them?

I don’t have all the answers. And it’s ridiculous to think all 18-year-olds know the answer to the rest of their lives at high school graduation.

I hope that we take the pressure off the college decision process. It’s true that navigating that choice will affect our decision-making frameworks for the future. So, if you’re a high school senior, I don’t want to be yet another person telling you what to do. My plea is simply that you think deeply about the reasons that are right for you to pursue learning opportunities — not for your reputation, pride, friends, parents, teachers or school. Building the confidence to do that now may be the best decision you can make, regardless of where you end up.

See the original essay on Thrive Global

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