As seventh-grade students at Rocky Heights Middle School in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, Amanda Gin and Chloe Voss are still very dependent on their parents. However, they realized that being able to count on adults was a privilege not every child had.

“Most of the children at the foster [center] were our age,” Amanda said. “Seeing as how Chloe and I, and many other teens, rely and depend on parents for so many things, it’s hard to imagine life without them. Yet the kids at the foster shelter are able to go through that every day.”

To do something nice for these kids, Amanda and Chloe designed a project for the IWitness Video Challenge that would show foster children in their community that someone cared about them.

Their video, “Nobody Forgotten,” took second place in the national competition, landing them a $1,000 scholarship, which they will share.

The students were inspired by a clip of testimony from a Holocaust survivor named Nora Danzig, who had a difficult experience at a foster home in England after being sent away on the Kindertransport from Germany at age 9 by her parents, whom she never saw again. 

Amanda and Chloe made gift bags that included crayons, toys, and cookies and dropped them off a local foster child placement agency.

“[Danzig’s testimony] expressed some of the troubles kids faced and how they might feel about the situation,” Amanda said.

Perhaps the most special part of the gift, however, was handwritten notes the two girls included in the bags to remind the children that someone was thinking of them.

“These notes were so moving to me, the idea that everybody deserves to feel loved,” said Amanda and Chloe’s teacher, Laurie Williamson. “These girls get it: No matter who you are, you are human and deserve not to be forgotten.”

Though Amanda and Chloe did the work for the project themselves, they also reached out to the community to get some help. They wrote a business letter to King Soopers supermarket and received a $25 gift card, which they used to purchase the cookies they included in their gift bags.

Amanda and Chloe spent two and a half weeks completing the project, something they did entirely on their own accord. Though Williamson explained the project to her students, she let them choose whether or not they wanted to undertake it — Amanda and Chloe were some of the few who did. Though it was a lot of work, the two girls said the experience was definitely worthwhile.

“These girls get it: No matter who you are, you are human and deserve not to be forgotten.”

Upon receiving word of the win, Chloe searched for the words.

“It’s just kind of – wow,” she said. “Knowing that we helped out kids was rewarding, and learning that we got second place is pretty mind-blowing and really exciting.”

For Amanda, the project offered a poignant lesson: “If you really feel strongly about something, and do something simple, just a little thing, it can have a stronger impact than you could ever imagine.”

Chloe finds this message especially instructive in light of how easy it is to feel overwhelmed by the enormity of global problems.

“You can’t start anything unless you take a first step,” she said.