This past summer, Alec Zhang, grade 11, and Jingjing Liang, grade 9, held a special online learning event called FUTUREx IDEA, which was attended by more than 100 students from 78 high schools across the country. The two students are officers of the nonprofit Future Bridge, of which Liang is the founder.

The event featured four learning tracks for attendees to choose from. One track taught students about socially responsible investing, in which students utilized group discussions to learn more about investing and participating in the Wharton Investment Competition. Another offered students insights on drafting essays, which Zhang said would help students “gain self-awareness and social awareness.” The third track, called Enlightening and Service, gave students the opportunity to learn how to operate in a workplace setting with a variety of projects. Finally, the AI and Innovation workshop delved into current and future applications of artificial intelligence and had students creating their own AI-driven mobile apps.

Future Bridge included many volunteers from various high schools with a diverse range of interests, which informed the guiding principle of planning the event. “When we planned for summer activities, Jingjing proposed that we can combine these passions to run a multi-track student-driven summer program,” Zhang said. “We came up with these activities based on allowing students to learn more and utilize their knowledge.”

This fall, Future Bridge plans to launch in-person boot camps to offer their instruction on building AI-based apps to people with less access to learning resources. Their team in Chicago is also planning to run boot camps in that area. “We truly hope more people can join forces with us to impact more communities around the Bay Area,” Zhang said.