20 Kids Who Are Stepping Up & Making a Difference

Face masks have been deemed recommended wearing in public during social distancing, but with them so in demand it can be hard for some folks to get their hands on one. Luckily for all of us, a boy who runs his own thrift store, aptly called Obocho's Closet, shifted gears and started sewing masks for those who need them.

Boy Scout Quinn Callander may be 12, but he's invented something incredible and useful for front line workers. He noticed how the masks that doctors and nurses had to wear for hours irritated their ears and found a way to 3D print a device that alleviates some of that pressure from their faces: ear guards, which he calls Ear Savers.

Social distancing is rough on a lot of us, introverts a little bit, but extroverts a lot. To help maintain some sort of neighborly love and community, the Roush family from Ohio created a drive-thru chat line specifically for this socially distant time. People can drive by the front of their house and have a little human interaction (safely.) 

Mom Corrine told Tanks Good News site: "We’ve had our ‘drive thru chat’ up for a week now and we’ve had dozens of visitors including our local police, the kids teachers and several neighbors we’ve never met! Several people have told us that it was the highlight of their day and it’s just been so wonderful to be able to talk face to face.”

When in doubt, dance. That's the idea that a girl named Rylee had to raise money to feed folks in need. With schools closed and other sources for feeding folks strained, it's more important than ever to donate to food bank programs. Rylee held a Dance-a-Thon to raise money for a program called Meals by Grace. She has hit her $1,500 fundraising goal.

Entrepreneurial kiddo Lucas from Katy, Texas, has been creating his puppy "Don't give up stickers" for a while now, but during this bleak time, they're more needed. He sells his Puppy Bubby stickers on Instagram and has spread joy one sale at a time.

Crowdsource funding website GoFundMe recently profiled 9-year-old Bear Yeung for using his entire piggy bank savings of $70 to buy snacks for doctors and nurses on the front lines. He went a step further and is now raising even more money to help feed our medical workers. According to GoFundMe he's already raised a few thousand dollars through the Lions Gate Hospital Foundation.

Most 7-year-olds just care about playing outside and being a kid, but this one went above and beyond. With the help of his mother, Zohaib Begg called around and was able to collect 6,000 masks, gloves, and shower caps to donate to front line doctors and nurses in need of supplies. According to ABC News, Begg spent a few years in the hospital as a younger child and wanted to find a way to give back to those who helped him during that time.

3D printing seems to be a popular tool to help create inventions that are helping people during this pandemic. Among kids using 3D printing to help is 13-year-old Charles Randolph, who has been printing masks to those who need them in his community. His inspiration? “I saw in the news that high-risk patients, people with existing diseases like heart problems and asthma, I thought this would help him, " Randolph told WJLA news.

Aside from masks, food, and money, there are lots of other ways people can help and the simplest way is just to put a smile on others' faces. After all, this is a hard time and it can be tough to feel hope with lots of bad news happening. That's where the Sashin family comes in. Mom Daphne and her kids rallied their neighborhood to create a "sidewalk-chalk museum" in everyone's driveways.

Staying informed is important to stay safe during this tumultuous time and journalism is the best way to make sure everyone gets the information they need. Turns out, kids can be journalists, too, like these two sisters, Rachel Meder, 9, and Laura Meder, 7, who printed a local newspaper to keep their neighborhood in the know.

YouTube has been a source of entertainment and information for people of all ages, kids and adults. Now, with everyone in isolation, YouTube is an important source of that. Thanks to 10-year-old Sydney, kids can now get tips and information to make it through this time from another kid. Sydney used her mom's online teaching program as the format.

Masks and food are great, but it's possible to still make someone's day by writing them a letter of encouragement and support. That's what two children did in Baltimore, Maryland. Fox Baltimore reports that Bella Grace Young, 9, and Nicholas Young, 6, wrote letters to local hospital staff and over 3,000 copies were sent to the Greater Baltimore Medical Center in Towson.

The saying goes that after every rainstorm comes a rainbow. Rainbows are not only pretty to look at, but they're a symbol of hope in times of sorrow, which sounds a lot like what we're all going through in this pandemic. This family from the UK took that rainbow sentiment to heart and chalked their brick house the colors of the rainbow for their entire neighborhood to see.

Teens are still kids, too, and though they may care a lot about TikTok and social media, they're just as caring and brilliant. A few students in Calgary, Alberta, Canada created a hotline for older folks to call when they're feeling lonely in social isolation. It's called The Joy4All Project and that's exactly the mission: "Our goal is to keep everyone engaged and happy during these tough times, especially the people who are helping the cause by self-isolating," the site reads.

Two New Jersey teens have stepped up to help businesses in need during the shutdown but putting together a GoFundMe to raise money for them. With donated funds, the 16- and 13-year-old are donating food and gift cards from local places to folks on the front lines. So far, the fundraiser has raised over $3,000.

The Grant family in Virginia have taken the states rest-of-year homeschool mandate lemons into a Spirit Week lemonade. Each day of their own "Grant Elementary" Spirit Week was dedicated to a fun theme, like pajama day, donuts with their dad, and even twinning day. Krystal Grant's brother is the dad behind the special week. She told ABC-13 in Virginia that it was "a way to make learning fun."

People are searching everywhere they can for a good at-home workout during this pandemic. There's streaming workouts and apps and of course YouTube. They're aimed at adults for the most part, though. And that's where TAZ Kids Fitness videos come in. They're fitness videos geared toward kids created by a really cool dad (aka Coach Tom Bingeman) and his two kids, Axe, 4, and Zave, 7. “We went to YouTube and typed in ‘kids workouts’ and there wasn’t much available, especially at that time,” Bingeman told YakTriNews. “We were like, we should make some.” And that's exactly what they did.

Art is a big theme during this global lockdown. It's not only a way for people to get creative while in isolation, but it can also bring joy to other people. That was the idea the Booker family had. English parents James and Emily Booker, and their children, Thomas and Olivia, used their time in quarantine to create dinosaur formations. Dad told SWNS news service it was their way of giving back to the health care workers who helped with their son Thomas' epilepsy.

Debbie Brusio, a high school junior with autism, was one of many kids who felt the impact of the shutdown and at-home school mandates take a toll on her routine. All kids benefit from routine, including those who have autism, and without one can make an already confusing time that much harder. To help other kids with autism better understand, Debbie and her family created a comic book explaining the current situation. It's published on the Pathfinders for Autism website.  

“It’s a tangible form of what is a popular term being used now, ‘edutainment,’ and that is educating people and entertaining them at the same time; that’s the model for ‘Debbie Fights Coronavirus,’" Debbie's dad Vincent Brusio told the Baltimore Sun. "It’s portable, it’s full of color, it’s a PDF format so it can be seen on any plane, any tablet any computer because of the universal application.”

It's a scary time for all of us, but it can be even more daunting for kids. But 5-year-old Taytum Bauman has been taking it in stride. Not only that but she recorded a pretend YouTube video to help others know how to stay calm during all of this. Her mother told Yahoo: "I really try to instill in her that worrying is not going to change anything and the best thing to do is to stay positive. When we're getting worried, we take deep breaths." Thankfully, we have Taytum to pass those tactics on to the rest of us.