2024 Camp 2030 Summit

Three current KGSP students participated in the UNITE 2030’s third annual Camp 2030 held on September 9^th to September 14^th. The camp is a six-day experience “designed to empower and equip young social entrepreneurs with the tools, knowledge, and network they need to launch impactful, mission-driven businesses.” Participants networked with peers from across the globe as they identified pressing social and environmental problems, brainstormed how to tackle issues, and developed plans to launch impactful social businesses. Campers participated in “Tracks” of global challenges aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and attended the Changemaker Summit held in New York City at the end of the six-day event.

Rayan Alsayed, a junior at the University of California, Davis majoring in Mechanical Engineering, Turki Almejhed, a sophomore at New York University majoring in Computer Science and Engineering, and Maryam Alameer, a sophomore at the University of Maryland, College Park, all worked on the Clean Energy track. Rayan and his team of campers focused on the Ogoni community in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. “The Ogoni people have long been oppressed by their government, which owns an oil company that has devastated their land,” Rayan said. “Our solution was to develop small hydropower generators that the community could build and maintain, reducing their reliance on the oil company for survival. We also proposed partnering with the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) to create workshops to teach the community how to construct these generators using scrap materials and DC motors.” Turki worked with his team to, “power a football stadium using sound and kinetic energy to alleviate high electricity costs and to find a sustainable solution that prevents output of heavy carbon emissions.”

Opportunities like Camp 2030 equip students with the tools to take on the world’s biggest challenges through collaborative innovation and sets them up to effectively apply lessons learned to their individual efforts in advancing global sustainability. For Rayan, Camp 2030 emphasized the importance of taking action and working collaboratively towards achieving meaningful change. “Within just five days, I connected with remarkable changemakers from around the world, worked together to study a problem, and developed an innovative solution,” Rayan said. “This aligns perfectly with my future goals of creating impactful, sustainable solutions to global challenges.” Reflecting on his time at Camp, Turki noted that, “meeting people from diverse professional and cultural backgrounds has shaped my perspective about the SDGs as an initiative everyone can participate in, no matter your academic background. As a computer science major and a prospective Global Leader and Scholar in STEM (GLASS) at NYU, using my technical acumen to achieve the SDGs has ultimately become a passion to pursue sustainable solutions.”

Participants of Camp 2030 return to their respective communities with the resources, skills, and knowledge to deploy global impact. For KGSP students, this experience provides exposure to a network of changemakers and thought leaders as they grow their passions in addressing critical world issues, and develop into exemplary leaders in the world.