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 after-effects. While vital, we were losing a race we could never beat. We patched symptoms while leaving root causes untouched. The realization came during visits to distribute hygiene kits to Buôn Đôn and Ama Trang Lơng communities in 2023 and 2024. Sitting down with local families in homes erected with bamboo trees 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 bandage on a deeply cut wound. That was my turning point. I realized I must address the problem before it exists by changing its environment. I connected our Healthy Future Program with our water project to implement the WASH+ (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) model and shifted from a disease-centric framework to structural prevention. This vision birthed our LEPS Framework (Learn → Equip → Practice → Sustain), transforming 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 school environments from the ground up. Through our Water Projects, we design low-cost infrastructure for remote schools, including filtration systems, storage tanks, and adaptable rainwater-harvesting gutters. We pair these projects with STEM workshops where students learn the science of clean water by building working filters from locally available materials. Our Healthy Future Program extends this approach through a broader WASH+ model. We provide essential health infrastructure, including medical cabinets and first-aid supplies, while engaging students in interactive lessons such as making practical, eco-friendly soap from local lemongrass and soapberries. Our Smiles for Life initiative applies the same systems approach to oral health through our LEPS Framework: • Learn/Equip: Students develop health literacy while classrooms receive hygiene stations stocked with toothbrushes, toothpaste, and educational resources. • Practice: Schools establish daily collective tooth-brushing routines that turn knowledge into consistent behavior. • Sustain: We train local educators to lead workshops, reinforce healthy habits, and maintain the water systems we build. Instead of relying on one-time clinical interventions or donations, we work with schools to create systems that communities can operate and sustain themselves. By combining physical infrastructure with education, resources, daily practice, and local leadership, we make prevention part of the school environment and everyday routine.
Impact: How has your project created impact / made a difference so far? Or, if at an early stage, what will impact look like?
Our impact is measured beyond mere participation; we track systemic, structural change. 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 between rainfalls. At 3-, 6-, and 12-month follow-ups, 100% of these systems remained fully operational. Education anchors every installation. We integrated specialized children’s handbooks and first-aid manuals directly into the standard school curriculum. Consequently, network-wide pre- and post-workshop quizzes demonstrated that student health literacy effectively doubled, with average post-workshop mastery scores soaring to twice the baseline mean. Through Smiles for Life, over 2,560 children and educators across 8 partner schools received comprehensive oral care, supplies, and teacher training. These schools successfully integrated daily tooth-brushing into their official academic schedules, turning prevention into a repeated practice. Furthermore, we trained 25 youth volunteers—our "Kiteys"—to lead projects independently, returning quarterly to support hardware monitoring and reinforce classroom routines. 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 infrastructure children need to practice what they learn. Health programs often address one piece of the problem. A team may provide education, distribute supplies, build a water system, or conduct a medical mission. We connect these pieces so they reinforce one another. Our WASH+ approach does more than provide water infrastructure. We pair infrastructure with hygiene education and daily practice. Our Smiles for Life program applies the same principle to oral health. Through the LEPS Framework, children and teachers Learn, receive the resources to Equip themselves, Practice healthy behaviors, and build the capacity to Sustain them. This creates a shift from delivering services to building systems. For example, teaching a child to wash hands is more meaningful when the school has accessible water and handwashing facilities. Giving a child a toothbrush is more meaningful when teachers help establish a routine for using it. Training teachers makes both efforts more likely to continue after an outside organization leaves. We are also adapting the model to rural Vietnamese schools rather than assuming that a program designed elsewhere will work unchanged. We work with local educators, youth union members, health partners and communities to identify needs and determine what they can realistically maintain. The individual tools are familiar. The innovation is connecting them into one school-based preventive health model designed around local ownership and long-term practice.
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. 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 aim to strengthen our integrated school-health model for responsible expansion. First, we will continue supporting participating schools, gathering qualitative feedback from educators to understand best practices and support needs. Second, we will optimize our Healthy Future, WASH+, and Smiles for Life curriculum materials, ensuring schools have clear operational guides for health education, hygiene, oral care, and technical maintenance while refining the LEPS Framework based on field data. Third, we will scale to additional rural schools through structured partnerships with local educators, community organizations, and public-sector entities, prioritizing areas lacking preventive infrastructure. Concurrently, we will strengthen our youth leadership pipeline, transitioning greater responsibility for logistics, communication, and monitoring to our core team to expand our organizational capacity. Finally, we will improve our measurement of sustainability, tracking long-term student habit retention, teacher engagement, and independent infrastructure functionality. Our definitive next step is translating localized insights from individual schools into a universal, open-source model that other global communities can easily adapt.
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 turn awareness into action by giving people a direct role in building and sustaining the solution. We see our community as partners. Our 25-member youth team, the Kiteys, leads education, communications, outreach, and field logistics. This gives young people meaningful responsibility in public health. We also engage students as active participants. They learn practical health skills, practice them together, and help make healthy behaviors part of everyday school life. Teachers become local leaders through training that prepares them to lead workshops, reinforce hygiene and oral health practices, maintain routines, and support implementation after our team leaves. For infrastructure projects, we work with local Youth Unions, schools, and community health partners to identify needs and develop solutions that local stakeholders can help build and maintain. So far, we have mobilized 25 youth leaders, trained 148 educators, and reached more than 2,560 children and educators through Smiles for Life. Our goal is to keep building local leadership so each school can carry the work forward.
