Call For Kindness Winners Include Project In Loudoun County

ASHBURN, VA — Teenager in Ashburn have been recognized nationally for their project promoting kindness, empathy, leadership and connection-making.

Those values embody the goal of the Riley’s Way Foundation, a nonprofit organization created in memory of Riley Sandler. Riley was a 9-year-old New York City girl set to enter fourth grade in 2014 when she suffered a fatal respiratory arrest while asleep overnight at a summer camp.

The foundation is a way to keep her kind spirit alive, Christine O’Connell, executive director of the foundation, told Patch earlier this year when seeking project nominations.

NEST Nurture, the result of hard work from Esha Venkat and Shreyaa Venkat in Ashburn, is among 30 projects — all created by teenagers — recognized across the country as winners in the Riley’s Way Foundation’s 2021 Call for Kindness.

The members of NEST Nurture will be awarded up to $3,000 for their contributions.

NEST Nurture seeks to “increase awareness and action around food waste reduction and rescue, and redistributes safe edible food to those in need,” according to Riley’s Way.

“Young people have the ideas, passion and drive to change the world,” O’Connell said in a news release. “We are empowering a youth-led movement of kindness at Riley’s Way.”

All 30 project winners addressed urgent community issues, according to the news release, including education equity, homelessness and mental health, among others.

Five projects selected this year addressed food insecurity, an issue that’s become more pressing since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020.

Among them, the “Living School Community Orchard Project” in New Orleans provides healthy food options for people on the east side of the city “and educates them on food that can be grown in their front yard.”

In South Dakota, another food insecurity-related kindness project that was recognized helps increase access to healthy produce for people in the Kul Wicasa Wóye Oígluha indigenous community.

“So many people are experiencing (food insecurity) during COVID,” O’Connell told Patch. “Food pantries are overstretched. So this is an issue we need to give extra attention to.”