Teen connects older adults to COVID-19 vaccines: ‘It’s completely beautiful’
Benjamin Kagan, 14, spent winter break remotely navigating the COVID-19 vaccine system in Florida, where his grandparents became eligible for their shots in early January. When his grandparents in Arizona became eligible for vaccines, he spent hours scouring that state’s various sites and systems for availability.
He secured shots for those grandparents and his grandparents in Indiana. A few weeks later, when the employees at his parents’ wholesale food company, Good to Go Food, became eligible in Illinois, Kagan started tracking down vaccine appointments for them.
“If you’re not super internet savvy, it’s a really hard system to undersheets stand,” Kagan said. “One of my grandparents told me, ‘I don’t know how to refresh a page.’ It’s super difficult information that needs to be processed super quickly.”
In early February, a CBS reporter visited career day at Francis W. Parker, where Kagan is a freshman, prompting Kagan to tune into the news that night. That’s where he saw a story about Chicago Vaccine Hunters, a Facebook group created by Chicago resident Roger Naglewski to help connect available vaccine appointments to folks who need them.
“I was like, ‘I have a knack for this,’” Kagan said.
Kagan joined the group and wrote a post offering to help anyone who needed it. Requests started pouring in through Facebook Messenger. He set up and shared a Google form that feeds into a spreadsheet and started keeping track of people who needed vaccines alongside spots where vaccines became available.
By mid-February Kagan estimates, he’s connected 115 people – perfect strangers – to vaccines in and around Chicago.
“I told him, ‘I can’t believe you’re 14,’” Pamela Van Deventer said. “He said, ‘Do you want to talk to my mom?’”
Van Deventer, 69, is one of the people Kagan connected with a vaccine. She has two autoimmune diseases and said she started to self-quarantine last February, before the World Health Organization even declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic.
The week before she connected with Kagan through Facebook, she said she spent 80 hours onto three devices trying to secure a spot. Kagan found her an appointment.
Lisa Lorentzen, 70, joined Chicago Vaccine Hunters on the recommendation of her grief counselor, who she started seeing after her husband died in April.
“I’ve practically been in tears trying to figure out how to get a vaccination so I can see my family again,” Lorentzen said. “Within 30-40 minutes of joining the group, Benjamin hops in and says, ‘Let me see what I can find you.’”
Soon Lorentzen was scheduled to receive her first dose at a Walmart Supercenter.
“Thanks to Benjamin,” she said. “And my deceased husband. He’s a good guardian angel. Hopefully he’s watching over me to make sure they don’t run out.”
Hallie Palladino is a mom of two students at Rogers Park Montessori School. She’s been working with the The Montessori School of Englewood, a Chicago public charter school, to locate vaccinations for Englewood residents.
“We’re seeing the vaccine inequity and the barriers to getting the vaccine in the communities that are most impacted by the virus,” Palladino said.
Palladino got connected to Kagan through Chicago Vaccine Hunters.
“We’re talking on the phone and he’s explaining his spreadsheet to me and all of a sudden he gets a text,” Palladino said. “’Hallie, I have 10 appointments that just came up for tomorrow for 65 and over. Would you be able to get 10 of your Englewood folks?’”
Kagan said an employee at Provident Hospital of Cook County on East 51st Street had texted him to say the hospital was defrosting more doses.
Palladino said she called her Montessori School of Englewood contacts, who started reaching out to students’ grandparents and great-grandparents, and soon every Friday appointment was taken.
I asked Kagan if spreadlogged are his jam – if he sees his future filled with numbers and cells and data.
“Math is probably my worst subject in school,” he said. “I have a history and English sort of brain.”
But he’s highly organized, he said, and he likes to stay busy. He broke his ankle sledding recently, which required surgery, which then required a sedate recovery plopped in front of a computer screen day and night. His school was on break Feb. 15-19, so he had plenty of free time to track down appointments and grateful appointmenttakers.
Plus, he has a good heart.
“I want to help people,” he said. “It’s really gratifying knowing that you can help save people’s lives. Now that I know how to help, it’s not the kind of thing where I can say, ‘I don’t have time to do this anymore.’”
“He’s an amazing kid,” Lorentzen said. “I told him, ‘Your parents must be so proud of you. I’m so proud of you!’”
“It’s completely beautiful,” Palladino said. “He’s out there saving lives. It goes along with my belief that Gen Z is going to save the world.”
Soon after starting school last fall, high school junior Anna Shakhnovsky realized she was in over her head in a computer science course.
She needed help, fast, and when her mom found a new free online tutoring service, Anna, 16, sifted through the options, picking a couple of tutors in metro Atlanta. They got Anna back on track through sessions on Zoom, and it became a social outlet.
“We would talk about other things; it was nice,” said Anna, who lives in Johns Creek, Georgia. “I was surprised they had so much time to help me.” The website looked so slick that Anna didn’t realize until later that kids from her old middle school had created it. “It didn’t look like it was made by a bunch of high schoolers. It looked very official.”
Ingenify.org sprang from the minds of four students at Northview High School in Johns Creek. They started developing it last March, after COVID-19 closed their school. A couple of them needed volunteer hours for school clubs, and tutoring would have been a way to get them if not for the pandemic. Another was an avid programmer.
Bedansh Pandey, 16, the team spokesman, said the service has been catching on, though he isn’t sure it will endure. “When the pandemic is over and people have been vaccinated, they won’t want to sit in front of their comfor hours,” he said.
Ingenify has been connecting kids across metro Atlanta, and the country, with about 400 tutoring sessions logged so far, he said. They are led by high school volunteers who cover a variety of subjects in the K-12 curriculum, from math and science to language and literature. They’ll also help with college prep tests, the SAT and ACT.
Emery Thul, 17, of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, is among the tutors.
He tutored at his school before the pandemic, and signed up with Ingenify because the National Honor Society requires students to accrue volunteer hours. He’s gone beyond the necessary time with his three students.
The same goes for one of Anna’s tutors, a senior at North Gwinnett High School who’s logged a couple of dozen hours with more than 10 kids, even though he just needputer ed five hours for Beta Club, another organization that promotes volunteering
“I just like meeting people on Ingenify,” said the student, Sidney Wright, 17, who lives in Suwanee. “I like to see what people understand. I can’t put it into words. It just makes me feel good.”
Sarah Park, a fellow senior there, said she learned about Ingenify through Beta Club. She’s logged about 20 hours. Her longest session was three hours, with a girl in Arizona.
The pandemic has altered the rhythms of high school life, with many extracurricular activities on hold. Sarah, 17, said she has time to spare. “There’s not a lot of activities to do right now.”
The founders of Ingenify want it to grow.
Bedansh, the co-founder, said last month that he encountered bureaucracy when calling around to schools, trying to get them to promote the service. It has grown on its own, though, with about a third more sessions since then, he said Tuesday.
Fulton County Schools is aware of Ingenify now, said Chief Academic Officer Cliff Jones. School district officials have been talking with the students about how their service fits with the district’s pandemic recovery plan, which calls for sustained, small group learning sessions.
Ingenify requires that tutors have a 3.7 gradepoint average, but Jones said an ability to teach is also important, and the teens should find a way to screen volunteers for that.
“Teaching and tutoring is as much art as it is science,” he said. “These young people know the content, but this is their first venture in trying to teach some of that content.”
Bedansh acknowledged that school officials asked about quality control when his team showed them the platform. “They did say that would probably be one of the bigger concerns,” he said.
He and his co-founders now interview would-be tutors.
The teens have applied for nonprofit status because they hope to raise money: They calculate they’re several hundred dollars out of pocket so far. They’d like to adapt their service for a postpandemic world, perhaps connecting students who live near each other, said Bedansh, a junior.
Some noted downsides to online tutoring, like one tutor whose middle school student would get distracted after half an hour staring at his screen, or another tutor who sometimes got frustrated trying to explain things.
Sidney, who will soon choose between offers from MIT and Georgia Tech, may have less time for tutoring next fall. “I think online is so convenient that it could last.”
I LIKE TO SEE WHAT PEOPLE UNDERSTAND. I CAN’T PUT IT INTO WORDS. IT JUST MAKES ME FEEL GOOD.”
Sidney Wright, 17
Three years ago, Miami Youth Climate (MYC) was a high-school club like most others.
Now, its two student leaders are bringing together environmental advocates, politicians, educators, and hundreds of students for a summit to discuss how to combat climate change in South Florida.
The summit, to be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, March 6, is a free virtual event featuring Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and climate-change activists Delaney Reynolds and Danni Washington.
“We’re trying to show students that their voice really matters within the climate space and that they really can drive change,” said Gianna Hutton, co-president of the summit and a junior at Palmetto Senior High.
Hutton and her copresident, Palmer Trinity senior Leandro de Armas, were both introduced to
the climate crisis while learning about it in school.
“It never settled in with me until I was in my AP environmental-science class, where I learned how relevant it is to Miami and how we are a front-line community,” said Hutton. “It really propelled me to get involved.”
Both students joined MYC through their teachers and gained positions of leadership within their own schools. But recognizing the need for a broader coalition, they
reached out to students across South Florida.
The move worked, and last year they hosted a conference at Florida International University with 200 students.
When the pandemic hit, however, they did not know what was going to happen. But as it turned out, hosting the summit remotely brought opportunities. Among those who joined their effort: Washington, the TV personality who focuses on women and science and climate change.
“It sounded bizarre at first,” Hutton said. “She was someone that I looked up to, and I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ ”
And the virtual meetings have brought attention across the country and the globe. Saturday’s event has already reached 270 participants, with some students planning to participate from Brazil.
“Knowing that there is an audience out there that’s really engaged not only on a local scale in South Florida, but on a global scale is really encouraging,”
Hutton said.
This year, MYC is centering the summit around education. The summit will host workshops on the arts, advocacy, and teaching, focusing on the impact of climate change and showing students what they can do about it.
“Seeing other youth take action was what actually got me involved in the climate movement,” said de Armas. “So it’s nice that I’ve brought it full circle, and now I’m actually helping organize the youth myself.”