When then-16-year old Mariam Kaba won $1 million through the Transform Rhode Island scholarship three years ago, she saw it as her opportunity to create the change she wanted to see in her nearly 45,000-person community of Woonsocket.
“I don’t see much positive representation from our community all the time,” Kaba said. “I was thinking ‘my scholarship won’t get picked.’ But it did … and I was able to bring something so big to my community, a community that already doesn’t have the most funding in the world.”
The scholarship, funded by the Papitto Opportunity Connection Foundation, asks students to answer, “if you had $1 million how would you target the lives of those in Rhode Island and how would you create change?”
Kaba’s investments resulted in a number of youth-centered spaces and opportunities popping up across the city, including 120 calm corners in elementary classrooms to support students’ sensory functions, new physical education equipment for all Woonsocket elementary schools, job fairs, hundreds of donated books, and field trips to local colleges & universities, among others.
Kaba, who is now a rising sophomore at Northeastern University, describes the experience of winning the scholarship as surreal.
“It didn’t occur to me that I was the last person standing and I won $1 million,” Kaba said. “But when I won, the first thing I thought was, ‘OK, let’s get to work. I’m given this opportunity to help improve my community. What steps can I take? And when does the groundwork start happening?’”
When a teen leads, adults follow
Bringing Kaba’s vision to life meant working alongside adults with experience in project management and community engagement while keeping up with her student life at Woonsocket High School.
“In high school, I managed both classwork and extracurriculars like student council, being a peer mentor and participating in Future Business Leaders of America,” Kaba said. “Balancing those things with my work with the scholarship came easy to me.”
Kaba partnered with community organizations across the state like nonprofit Leadership Rhode Island. This collaboration helped lay out a roadmap for Kaba’s proposal, manage the scholarship funds and coordinate meetings with community leaders.
The winning student also sits on the board of the Papitto Opportunity Connection Foundation for a year. This provides an opportunity for them to build their network and connect with leaders in Rhode Island.
High schoolers can make a difference through spaces and support like this, Kaba said, and also advises teens interested in engaging with their community to “not be afraid to start off small.”
This “small” gesture, Kaba added, can be as simple as gathering a group of friends to organize a community cleanup or starting a school club or Instagram to advocate for something they’re passionate about.
“Starting off small is going to give you those steps to leading these big impactful projects,” Kaba said.
The feedback Kaba received on her community investments, primarily from peers, community members and teachers in Woonsocket, was overwhelmingly positive.
“People told me, ‘I was able to go to this job fair and I got connected to this job,’ or, ‘I’m going to the Harbour Youth Center to get items from the food pantry you created and it’s been helping my family a lot,’” Kaba said. “Community organizations reached out to me to let me know they would love to find a way to work together and do their part to take action too.”
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