2026 High School Winners

Matthew Park is an 11th grader at Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Illinois. He has always enjoyed learning about economics and how economic theories can be utilized to help people worldwide. After taking AP Microeconomics and learning about the housing crisis in the United States through his civic engagement fellowship, Civics Unplugged, he decided to make a video for the contest. Matthew was aware that population growth has resulted in unstable housing prices for everyday Americans and millions of people becoming homeless. However, he was surprised that community land trusts (CLTs) were the first sustainable solution to pop up during his research. He emphasized that “I firmly believe that housing is a human right, and not something that should become inaccessible to millions of people when it’s solely treated as a commodity.”

To make his video, Matthew focused on the script and selected the most relevant statistics to get his point across. He incorporated music to create “a pensive tone” and keep the viewer’s attention. He then used CapCut to record his audio and capture the footage, and then moved to Adobe Premiere Pro to fine-tune his production.

Matthew recently kick-started his own program called Incentive Finance, which creates videos on financial literacy topics for youth, including investing and housing. After making his video, he hopes to create more videos on stable housing and post them on his organization’s Instagram. Matthew wishes to join another nonprofit organization that focuses on affordable housing and other economic inequality topics, too.

Along with the World of 8 Billion contest, Matthew has participated in pitch competitions and received several cash prizes to start his second organization, HIALO, raising awareness for youth athletes with concussions. He loves sports and is on his school’s track team. His favorite events are the 100 and 200-meter sprints. After High School, Matthew plans to major in business and create his own startup that sustainably tackles a real-world problem.