The joy of giving

During their ground investigation, Xue, Melaku and Ahmed discovered that a majority of clinics in rural areas grapple with a power crisis, which frequently leads to suspension of emergency procedures at night. The team decided to find a viable solution to this electricity problem.

Between May and August, Li and her friends promoted the cause on social media in an effort to raise funds to purchase solar equipment. The team plans to buy 60 tailor-made pieces of equipment-basically a wireless, fixed phone with solar-powered LED lights-from an energy company for rural clinics. It has also convinced the company to donate 200 solar reading lights to students in the village.

Organizers of the competition may offer Li a chance to work as a field volunteer in Ethiopia for implementation of the project. As team leader, she is in charge of drafting the final plan, contacting enterprises and managing fundraising data.

"The competition has not only honed my leadership skills, it has also allowed a good grasp of ways to mobilize enterprises for charity endeavors in the future," Li says, adding that she wants to major in health science, which would equip her better for public welfare projects around the globe.

Barely into her teenage years, the Western Academy of Beijing student Xu Yijia bagged the top prize at this year's competition for her project to raise funds for mosquito control at a public primary school in Uganda, where malaria is a serial killer.

To promote the project online, the 13-year-old wrote a rap song on how the vector-borne parasitic infection was threatening lives in the landlocked East African nation and exhorting netizens to join the crusade against malaria.

"Most contestants filmed a short documentary to promote their projects, but we decided to add a beat or two," Yijia says. The strategy worked and the music video garnered more than 3.2 million views online, winning the team the judges' favor.