Country of Residence
United States
Age
16
Project title
Green Kites International Association
Project Summary: Describe your project in one sentence
Green Kites International Association (GKIA) is a youth-led global nonprofit transforming health, clean water, and education in Vietnam’s most underserved communities by building sustainable solutions that empower children, schools, and local leaders.
Website URL(s) or social media handles.
www.greenkitesinternational.com
Project Category
My project is a brand new / emerging idea
Project Stage
Established (We have regular weekly or monthly impact that we are reliably measuring)
Founding Story: What was the spark that led you to start your project? What was the "Aha!" moment that led you to get started and see the potential for this to succeed?
For years, we raced against time. I volunteered on traditional medical missions, treating advanced diseases and managing their after-effects. While vital, we were losing a race we could never win—patching symptoms while leaving root causes untouched. The realization came during visits to distribute hygiene kits to the Buôn Đôn and Ama Trang Lơng communities in 2023 and 2024. Sitting down with local families in homes built of bamboo and patched metal sheets, I noticed the villagers drank cloudy water from rusted faucets, accepting it as a norm. It was their only reality. It became clear that a child cannot build healthy habits if the community lacks clean running water to rinse a toothbrush, wash a hand, or flush a toilet. Handing out supplies was just a temporary bandage on a deeply cut wound. I realized I must help address the problem before it exists by changing its environment. I joined others to form the Green Kites International Association (GKIA) to lead Smiles for Life and integrate a comprehensive WASH+ model, shifting from a disease-centric framework to structural prevention. This vision birthed our LEPS Framework (Learn → Equip → Practice → Sustain) to transform classrooms into spaces where hygiene is woven into daily life. Seeing local teachers run workshops and maintain the water and hygiene infrastructure systems proved this sustainable model could succeed.
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve? Why does it matter to you and your community?
In rural, underserved communities in Vietnam, children face preventable health conditions while schools often lack the infrastructure and resources to prevent them. A child can learn to brush correctly, but that lesson has limited value without clean water or a place to wash. We can bring hygiene supplies to a school, but donations alone do not build lasting habits. Visiting teams provide critical treatment, but the same problems can return once they leave. I witnessed this gap firsthand through dental missions and clinic outreach. After caring for thousands of patients, I began asking a different question: How can we prevent these problems before a child ever needs treatment? This work is deeply personal. As a second-generation Vietnamese American whose family endured hardships to build a life in the United States, I grew up benefiting from the established systems and opportunities that allowed us to thrive. When I visit Vietnam, I see communities where children lack some of the basic conditions I had taken for granted. I want to help create those same opportunities for the communities my family came from. Schools are the catalyst because they can turn healthy behaviors into daily routines. True prevention requires a lasting system that combines infrastructure, education, resources, and local leadership so healthy practices can continue long after outside teams leave.
Your Solution: How are you solving this problem? Share your specific solution.
Our solution is an integrated, school-based preventive health model that connects education, infrastructure, resources, daily practice, and local leadership to build healthier environments from the ground up. • Water Projects: We design low-cost infrastructure for remote schools, including rainwater harvesting, filtration systems, and storage tanks. We pair these installations with STEM workshops where students learn the science of clean water by building functioning filters from locally available materials. • Healthy Future Program: Extending this approach through a broader WASH+ model, we install essential medical cabinets and first-aid supplies. We then engage students in emergency preparedness, interactive CPR lessons, and workshops for crafting eco-friendly soap from local lemongrass and soapberries. • Smiles for Life: This initiative applies the same systems approach to oral health through our LEPS Framework: • Learn / Equip: Students develop health literacy while classrooms receive designated hygiene stations stocked with toothbrushes, toothpaste, and educational guides. • Practice: Schools institute daily collective tooth-brushing routines that transform raw knowledge into consistent, lifelong behavior. • Sustain: We train local educators to lead ongoing workshops, reinforce daily habits, and maintain the water systems long-term. Instead of relying on one-time clinical interventions or short-term donations, we collaborate with schools to build self-sustaining ecosystems. By combining physical infrastructure with local leadership, we make structural prevention a natural part of the everyday school routine.
Impact: How has your project created impact / made a difference so far? Or, if at an early stage, what will impact look like?
• Water Infrastructure & Resilience: By 2026, our water systems served 1,418 students and teachers, installing 102,500 liters of storage capacity to provide 14 days of water resilience. 100% of systems remained fully operational at 3-, 6-, and 12-month follow-ups. • Healthy Future Program: We expanded health equity by implementing an emergency preparedness program alongside compliant medical cabinets and systematic supplies tracking. This infrastructure ensures emergency medical supplies remain organized and continuously verified. • Curriculum-Anchored Education: We integrated specialized children’s handbooks, first-aid manuals, CPR education, and hygiene training into standard school curricula. Consequently, network-wide quizzes demonstrated that student health literacy doubled, reflecting a substantial improvement in core hygiene concepts. • Smiles for Life Integration: Through Smiles for Life, over 2,560 children and educators across 8 partner schools and a community received oral care, hygiene stations, and training. These schools integrated daily tooth-brushing into their curricula, turning prevention into a repeated daily practice. By sharing operational responsibility directly with local schools and youth unions, we ensure success is defined not just by who we reach, but by the lasting infrastructure communities run on their own.
Your Innovation: What is different about your project compared to other programs or solutions already out there? How is your project new or innovative?
Our innovation is connecting health education with the physical infrastructure children need to practice what they learn. Traditional health programs often address only a single piece of the puzzle: a team may provide lectures, distribute short-term supplies, build an isolated water well, or conduct a temporary medical mission. While well-intentioned, these isolated interventions act as temporary bandages on systemic issues. We connect these separate pieces into a unified, reinforcing network that shifts the paradigm from delivering transient services to building permanent systems. We implement this systemic approach across three deeply integrated programs designed for the unique context of rural Vietnamese schools: • Water Projects: We build low-cost rainwater harvesting and filtration systems so schools have reliable, clean water, pairing the hardware with STEM workshops where students build filters from local materials. • Healthy Future Program: Moving beyond simple infrastructure, we expand this into a broader WASH+ model by equipping classrooms with compliant medical cabinets, systematic inventory tracking, emergency preparedness training, and eco-friendly soap making. • Smiles for Life: We scale this exact behavioral principle to oral health using our LEPS Framework (Learn → Equip → Practice → Sustain), establishing daily collective tooth-brushing routines inside classrooms. Teaching handwashing is futile without running water; giving a child a toothbrush is meaningless without a structured routine enforced by trained teachers. The individual tools we use are familiar. The innovation is weaving them together into a single, school-based preventive health model anchored in local ownership, youth union partnerships, and long-term community maintenance.
How many people are on your team?
34
Your team: What role(s) do your team members play? How do you share leadership with them?
Our youth-led team shares leadership globally. I head oral health, developing Smiles for Life and the LEPS Framework, while Sean leads Healthy Future. Hannah manages northern Vietnam partnerships, Daniel Nguyen directs southern operations and implementation, and Daniel Cox handles technical engineering design. We also have 4 core advisors. Our 25 Kiteys drive outreach, fundraising, and education. We work cross-functionally, sharing decisions with local partners and advisors as a cohesive unit.
What’s Next: What are the next steps you plan to take to grow or strengthen your project over the next year? If your project is still in the idea stage, describe the steps you will take over the next three months to launch or begin developing it.
Over the next year, we will focus on strengthening our operational model, optimizing our current infrastructure, and expanding our school-based preventative model to 2 additional schools that have requested support. Our roadmap prioritizes long-term stability across our three core programs: • Water Projects Expansion & Care: We will carefully scale our low-cost rainwater harvesting and filtration systems to 2 new partner schools. Simultaneously, we will conduct routine technical maintenance assessments on our existing installations to ensure year-round water safety and resilience. • Healthy Future Program Standardization: We will simplify our emergency preparedness materials, standardizing our first-aid and CPR training modules for educators. We will introduce a simple, paper-based inventory tracking sheet for teachers to help them independently manage and restock their compliant medical cabinets. • Smiles for Life & Local Ownership: Using our LEPS Framework, we will set up classroom hygiene stations in the 2 new schools while deeply reinforcing the "Sustain" phase across our 8 existing sites. We will focus on training school directors and local youth union leaders to fully take over the daily collective tooth-brushing routines. By combining measured expansion with deep local ownership, we will ensure our school-based model remains completely self-sufficient as it grows.
How do you encourage other people to join your project or learn about the problem you’re working on? If you have a new idea, tell us how you will do this in the future.
We focus on shared operational responsibility, global advocacy, and cultivating a pipeline of future youth leaders. Because our initiative is entirely youth-led, we mobilize peers by framing public health as an actionable opportunity for community building. • Internal Leadership Pipeline: We actively train our current youth volunteers to transition into leadership roles within the organization. By providing hands-on management training, we empower them to step up, run projects independently, and lead teams just as we do, ensuring long-term organizational continuity. • Global Advocacy & Mentorship: We share our model with international networks. As a Featured Speaker in the Gmartek "Changemakers" Series, 2 delivered an address to over 300 students across the U.S., Australia, and Vietnam. To scale this, we launched the Green Kites Youth Changemakers Impact Lab, providing five selected students with six months of project mentorship. • Curriculum Integration: Locally, we weave specialized handbooks directly into school curricula. This ensures health challenges are discussed daily, transforming students into active health advocates within their families. By combining school-based health systems with global leadership development, we ensure success is defined not just by who we reach, but by the lasting infrastructure and new generation of changemakers we leave behind.
