Pragna Nidumolu
Pragna is a junior at Freedom High School in Virginia. She is a Social Entrepreneur who is passionate about sustainability and raising the floor for the voices of youth for the cause. She founded EcoTeens with a vision to amplify the voices of teens across the world to have the attention of businesses, lawmakers, governments, and the communities we live in.
Pragna is a huge proponent of “Girls in STEM”. She is a school ambassador of “X-STEM” which is an “Extreme STEM” symposium for middle and high school students that features interactive lectures by a select group of visionaries with the goal of empowering and inspiring children to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. She was the co-organizer of the “Girls in STEM” event at the USA Science and Engineering festival, 2018.
Pragna is a trained classical Indian dancer. She started training at the young age of 4. She performs at various events across the US and was invited to perform at a world dance festival in Cambodia in 2019. She was invited to perform at a TEDx event where she co-presented on the topic of “Connecting generation through the art of dance”.
How it started
In the summer of 2017, I went to India to visit my grandparents and extended family. We went to several tourist destinations and experienced mixed emotions. While the destinations were spectacular with historical significance, the surroundings were filled with non-biodegradable trash like plastic, glass and batteries. I had an opportunity to interact with fishermen in the area who shared that the fish population representing half of sea food declined significantly in the past decade. Everyone I talked to during my visit observed shifting seasons which are directly linked to warmer global temperatures.
The very next year, I visited Kenya during my summer vacation. While the natural beauty of Africa was unparallaled, sadly the issue of plastic pollution was rampant in the area. The locals shared that across Africa, unmanaged waste and pollution are becoming serious problems having devastating effects on wildlife and communities.
The trips and the impacts of plastic pollution on the ecosystems had a profound impact on me. With a goal to help my local community, I joined the program “Adopt-a-Highway” which aims to help keep roadsides clean. Through this program, I realized that the responsibility and the accountability of a sustainable planet is not just of the adults but everyone. Teens today have incredible potential to change things in the world. There are more teens in the world than ever before: 1.2 billion, totalling one sixth of the global population. I decided to embark on a journey to rally teens across the world to call for action to make our communities, businesses and practices more sustainable.