I have overcome adversity in many ways. During the pandemic, I overcame with prayer. My faith helped me to overcome the global pandemic. I learned more about God and had some peace in that area. Family and friends' support also helped. I was productive in different ways. I used many different coping skills to improve my mental health. It helped to stay sane. I can help the community in the future with my career. I can impact people's lives with my career. Also, being a law abiding citizen will help my community by helping to keep it safer and welcoming. I can help my community by putting others first. I help use my knowledge to help people in need. Self care can also benefit the community because when I have taken care of myself, I can take care of others also. Being a good person and doing the right thing will help me and the people around me. It will help things to work properly and function well. I can volunteer and give money to the community. Not only money but food, clothes, time, and more. I can help the community by telling them about Jesus and the Bible. If I genuinely believed in something and knew that it was correct, it would be wrong for me to keep it to myself. Especially if it's the difference between life and death. It can save their life and their soul. It can change lives. It can change someone's perspective about themselves, other people, and the world. It can speak life and bring life to their situations and lives. It can encourage BETTER behavior. It can cause a ripple effect encouraging others to spread life and positivity unto others as well. Those are just a few things that the Christian faith can do. I can help the community by helping my family and friends. I can be a good sister and a good role model/good example to my younger family members. I can be a good daughter and friend. Working on my relationship with the Lord will help and has helped me overcome hard times. Studying the scriptures and seeking the truth concerning the scriptures help me to stay sane. It improves my mental health. Encouragement and wisdom from the Bible help me in my everyday life. I wish to be holier and more religious in the future. Being holier and closer to God will help me to behave and people around me will have peace with me, I will have peace with myself, and God will have peace with me also.

There are many things about me that make me unique. I like to sing, play instruments, deep clean, read the bible, and more. Most of these hobbies of mine are either not common, or hard to do well. I can perform well in all tasks. I am very good at being productive. So, I have little to no distractions. I have not had a phone for years. It is about to be officially four years. I hate mice. I am from Cameroon. I was born there. I want to be a mechanical engineer--an inventor to be more specific. I hate the idea of debt. I don´t want to have debt. I am very smart and creative. I love hair. I want to grow long hair. I am pretty independent. I can take care of myself. I can behave well at times. I am pretty mature. I plan on giving back to the community by giving my time, ideas, energy, money, and inventions. I plan on helping the community in areas of need. I plan on using my skills, and knowledge for good. I plan on helping the community by being the best version of myself. I get my morals from the bible. I can help my community by behaving and doing the right thing. I can volunteer, and help out in local areas near me that serve the community. If I am not capable of directly helping someone or an organization then I can contribute to the people who can. I can donate to charities and good causes. I can help encourage good behavior. I can be an example to others. I can help save lives with my ideas, and inventions. I can help by not littering. I can help by picking up the trash, even other people´s trash, and cleaning my neighborhoods. I can help by helping the homeless, and my neighbors in need. I can help by selling goods to my community. Goods like maybe food, arts & crafts, and clothes. I can be the light to the people around me. I can the gospel to others, so that they may find Jesus, and can go to heaven. I can help by sharing my talents, like my art abilities (singing, drawing, piano, and guitar skills) for good. I can help by sharing positive messages. I can help by teaching younger people about the world. I can help the community by helping my family before I help the community.

I am from Cameroon. My entire family is from Cameroon. I am proud of where I am from. I am also Christian, and most of my morals come from the bible. I'm from Africa, so I'm African. But, I don't mind being identified as an African American. I came to America when I was young. I grew up here. I am grateful for the many opportunities that I am able to have here. I don't want to take it for granted--especially in education. I want to make a difference in this world for the better. I am a straight female in high school. I want to make inventions that will save lives. A way that I can do this is by working in or with the health field. I can help make medical inventions that will improve tons of people's health. If I could be awarded a scholarship to help me to achieve my dreams, I would really appreciate it. My motives are for the good. I want to improve the living conditions for a lot of people. If I can learn more about health, I can be more equipped to make inventions that will improve people's health. I am very hardworking and I will put in the work. I am sure that I can be trusted with such a task because I am very passionate about what I'm pursuing. My identity as a Christian influences me in every way. It influences my behavior and how I see the world. It humbles me and encourages me to be the best version of myself. It also gives me hope. That even though this world is a very dark, and dangerous world, there is still light and the light always wins in the end. I learn new things every day and try my best to be productive daily/every day. I consider myself intelligent, and creative. These traits are essential for my career. I care about my health and the health of others. As a moral person, I will use integrity as I'm doing my duties. I will try to do things the right way. Health is one of the many areas that I plan on improving in terms of human quality of life. My inventions can help extend the average lifespan. If i'm successful, I can help to encourage future generations to be inventors as well. I can inspire others and might create a chain reaction of positive future leaders.

I am passionate about the extracurricular activities that I am currently involved in now for various reasons. I occasionally visit the bible study club. I am interested in that club because I'm a Christian, and I try to follow the bible. So, it's nice to talk about the bible. Being religious isn't common as a kid or teen. It isn't popular most of the time--even for adults but especially not for children. My morals come from the bible. Another club that I am involved in is the robotics club. I am interested in that club because when I grow up I want to be a mechanical engineer and a singer. But, I really just want to make machines and inventions when I grow up. So, robotics is a nice introduction to my career. Although, it is not my first introduction to engineering. I am interested in coding so I participated in 2 programs for coding for children. (Outside of school). It was fun and educational. I was introduced to some coding languages as well. I am also participating in a mindfulness-based stress reduction for teens. It's like a gathering where you talk about mental health. I am interested in that because I can use it to improve my mental health in the future, and I can learn more about more ways to cope with stress and anxiety in the future. It will help me to better manage my stress. There are some other extracurricular activities in my school that I am interested in but haven't participated yet in. These activities will benefit my community because I can use what I learn to benefit others. If I'm not so stressed all of the time, other people are benefited because I would be saner. I will have a sound mind when making decisions, even while stressed. That benefits everyone. I can also use the skills that I learned from robotics to help me in my future career. I want to make inventions to save lives. I don't want to make inventions to comfort and entertain the rich. If I am successful with my career, I can give back to the community, and help so many people. I can use my inventions for good--to improve the world. These activities benefit my community because it's educational. I'm not learning original or opinion-based stuff. I'm being taught how to do things based on truth and instructions. It should help me because when I'm in the real world (or in other communities) I won't be confused when the same instructions come up because it's the same information that's being shared. It's universal information and it's beneficial.

My family and friends initiated me to do community service. Growing up, in churches I performed and helped out on multiple occasions. The church members felt like family to me, since we bonded and got along so well. Those were my first few experiences with community service. And, during the pandemic, my family, church family, and friends helped support us do more community service. We helped the homeless. We are committed to making care packages for the homeless. We included essentials for basic living, food, drinks, and kind notes. The kind notes were special messages from us to them reminding them of God's love. It was very nice. We went out for 5 weeks in a row. We even got to eat the leftover food, which was fun. I plan to contribute more in this area in my future career. When I grow up, I want to be a mechanical engineer and a singer. My main focus will be mechanical engineering, and singing will be more of a side hustle. I want to make inventions to save lives. I don't want to make inventions to comfort and entertain the rich. I want to make inventions for needy and desperate people. Like, people in third-world countries, for example. I can make water filters with new and improved technology, for example. My inventions can go to places that have recently had natural disasters. There are so many ways that my future career goals can help the community. But, besides my career, I can go out of my way to help people in my community. Right now, I am currently helping my neighbor with his backyard. I help him to remove weeds, and more. He's old and he's trying to grow a garden. It must be prepared for gardening and it should look presentable. I just want to be a good person, and do good deeds. I also help my neighbors by shoveling the snow in their driveways when they can't do it themselves. I would do more, but I am limited because of my age and my availability. I have a lot of loving family and friends around me, and I would help them and encourage them in their endeavors if they want me to. I strive to take care of myself as a priority as well because you have to put yourself first at times. How can you love someone else before loving yourself? How can you help/take care of someone else without first helping/taking care of yourself? So, I contribute to my community in various ways. And, I will plan to continue in the future as well by God's grace.

I am 17 years old. I attend Bowie High. My family is middle class. When I grow up, I want to be a mechanical engineer and a singer. But, I want my main career to be an engineering and I want singing to be more of a side hustle. I also dream to be married one day, and maybe a mother as well. For my community service hours, I helped take care of the homeless. My family, church families, and friends helped to achieve the goal. We prepared some essentials for comfortable living. Along with kind notes. We gave them food, drinks, and some self-care essentials. I'm a Christian, and my morals come from the bible. I would like to be remembered for being a good person, and for being loyal to God. If I'm going, to be honest, I don't really care too much about my legacy. All that matters to me is what God thinks about me, not what people think. So, if I were to say anything it would probably be that my legacy is that even though I was born a sinner, and have made a lot of mistakes, I have eventually turned my life around, was holy, followed, and was loyal to God. I want a good ending. A strong finish, because that's what truly matters. I try not to care what people think about me. I am very intelligent, but not perfect. I am creative, and I want to use my creativity to improve the world. I want to make inventions that would save lives. I don't want to make inventions for the rich, and people already living comfortable lives. I want to make inventions for needy and desperate people. Like, people in the third world and less developed countries. It would be nice if I could make the world a better place for future generations. It would make life more liveable. I want to be known for being brave and for standing up for what I believe against all odds. I love seeking the truth, and it is usually hidden. There is a lot of wickedness in this world, and there's nothing that we can do about it, but the good that we can do, we should do. I am going to turn 18 soon, and I am nervous about adulthood because I'm going to be in the real world. But, I am excited about what the future holds for me.

A technology that inspires me is the phone. Phones are great devices. They are so popular in modern-day times. They can as helpful and beautiful as destructive and dangerous. They are so useful. They can save lives. We can use them to learn more information. Students use phones for their education. We use phones to talk to people far away. We can use them to alert others for emergency help. We can promote and advocate for ourselves and others. We can share our ideas, and encourage each other. I want to make devices similar to phones, that can improve quality of life. Even save lives. Phones help us to stay connected to each other. We can use phones to access the internet. We can use phones to earn money and to contain our digital money. We can use phones for music. We can use phones to look up things that we are serious about. We can use phones for GPS. We can play games. We can take notes. We can play stuff on our phones. We can take photos and videos of interesting things that we want to remember. We can use phones to find other lost phones. We can use phones to improve our health. There are some apps out there, meant to help us maintain a healthy lifestyle. Phones can entertain us. We can use phones to locate other people as well. We can use phones for fashion and self-expression. We can use phones to make announcements. There are so many great benefits of phones. here are just a few. If we can use it for good, our world would be a better place.

Mental health has made me sad, and depressed. The pandemic lockdown forced me to stay inside, with my thoughts. It was very hard. I felt like I was suffocating. The only way that I could communicate was through texting my friends. I didn't meet up with them in person. My poor mental health resulted in me failing in school. My grades dropped. Also, I stayed in my room a lot. I didn't want to leave my house. It got to a point where I didn't even want my friends to see me, in the condition that I was in. I did try to get back up slowly. Support from family and friends helped. Prayer also was very helpful. I spent some time working on myself. I did read the news. It didn't help my mental health. It only made things worse. Now, it was not because I was too embarrassed to leave my home. Now, it was because I was scared to leave my home. People were losing their minds. Crime increased. I felt unsafe. The wickedness was overwhelming. I had trouble sleeping, and I had problems focusing. I couldn't pay attention to my schoolwork. I was easily distracted. I had a lot of stress. I was trying to be safe. I was trying to survive. I was trying to stay alive. My family and friends comforted me. I felt so isolated. On top of everything going on, I tried my best to keep my business to myself. Outsiders didn't need to know what was going on with me. It could even put me in a bad position or could endanger me. So, I had to keep this to myself. So, that was my experience. I plan on implementing change for those affected by mental health in many ways. One way to be a good person. Stay out of the way. Mind your business. Do the right thing. Make sure that if anyone is stressed, it's not because of me, or something that I did. I could also pray for their mental health to improve. I can pray that things will get better for them. I can go out of my way to help the needy and suffering. I can advocate, and be a voice for the voiceless. I can advocate for people's rights and beliefs. If I know the person, I can befriend them. I can comfort them. Tell them that everything is going to be alright. Encourage them, and help them. I can finally do my part, to be a good law-abiding citizen. There are so many more ways that I can implement change for those affected by mental illness. This is how mental illness has affected me. These are a few ways that I could implement change for others.