Youth Project Wins Microsoft Competition
An idea for social change that began at NC State University was a grand prize winner in Microsoft’s YouthSpark Challenge for Change contest earlier this year.
Steven Mazur, ‘13, a former student in the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program (EEP) and NC State Park Scholar, co-founded Triangle Youth Leadership Services (TYLS) with fellow Park Scholar Adam Dunn, ’13 during their freshman year at NC State. As grand prize winners of the YouthSpark Challenge, TYLS received a Microsoft-sponsored volunteer trip to Kenya, a $2,500 cash prize, and a variety of Microsoft products—including a tablet and smartphone.
The competition is hosted by Microsoft Citizenship and targets youth-driven programs led by young adults. Referred to as a “brilliant spark of social good” by Microsoft, TYLS was selected as one of five grand prize winners out of a group of 20 finalists. The NC State community helped TYLS cinch their win by voting via Microsoft’s website, but the 20 finalists were selected by a judging panel.
TYLS started as a service organization at NC State designed to help prepare high school students to solve challenges facing their communities.
Through the years, the organization hosted several conferences on campus for approximately 250 high school students. During the two-day curriculum, participants worked in teams to solve real-life community challenges through a design-thinking lens.
According to Dunn, dozens of student volunteers at NC State have been paired with hundreds of high school students from across the state at the annual conferences.
Participants leave with a concrete solution to a problem in their local communities that they, even as high school students, can pursue.
Mazur said TYLS plans to use the prize money they received from Microsoft’s YouthSpark Challenge to provide funding for some of these project ideas. Plans also include expanding their model to other universities, which will require TYLS to hire additional employees to help manage the program.
“Until my senior year, I viewed TYLS as a service organization and not a scalable business,” Mazur explained. “The Engineering Entrepreneurs Program (EEP) introduced me to formal entrepreneurship, and allowed me to see TYLS with an entrepreneurial eye. While the organization didn’t change much once this happened, our ambitions surely did.”
Meanwhile, the program continues to flourish right here on campus where it began. Led by students like Andriy Shymonyak, ’15, a student in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Poole College of Management, TYLS has expanded from a one-day conference to a two-day event.
But perhaps its most significant contribution is, “the individual comments from parents and students as they reflect on their experience [at the TYLS conference] and their push to make change in their local communities,” Shymonyak said.
