2026 High School Winners

Maisarah Aminah Dombrowski is in the 11th grade at Pennsbury High School in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania. She discovered the World of 8 Billion student video contest two years ago while looking for environmental competitions and was drawn to its challenge to students to solve real global challenges through film. Maisarah has been very interested in environmental issues, such as wildlife conservation and fast fashion, and she didn’t realize how fragile energy systems are, so she wanted to create a video about it. She feels that people need to know that energy poverty is prevalent everywhere, even in the U.S., especially in rural areas. “Many rural communities still lack access to electricity, which makes it hard to do homework there.” She thinks microgrids could help growing communities take the next step toward accessing reliable energy without placing as much burden on our planet.

This is Maisarah’s second time participating in the contest. She earned a State Honor for her “Agriculture vs. Invasive Species: Who Wins?” video in 2024. Her first video was well-researched, but she had limited time for visuals and editing, so she wanted to make sure she set aside time for that this year. She is an artist, so she created the images for her video and then made it into a stop-motion video. The stop-motion technique was challenging because she had to select so many photos, and many of them needed adjustments for each frame. She used Procreate and iMovie to create and edit her film, and even though it was challenging, she enjoyed working on it. Her advice to future participants is to “give yourself enough time to create your video and think outside the box to create a unique video.”

Maisarah is passionate about conservation and uses art as a platform to advocate for environmental challenges, driven by her desire to make a meaningful difference. She has been working on paper quill bird sculptures and has created a website about endangered birds in Pennsylvania and how to protect them, reflecting her commitment to wildlife preservation. She shared this project with the Shane McConkey Ecochallenge this year and is waiting on the results of the competition. She is also working on putting up bluebird boxes in a local park to support local bird populations. In her free time, Maisarah loves to paint, quill, and knit. She also plays the violin in the school’s honors orchestra and is a part of the mathletes. After high school, she hopes to study environmental science or geoscience, combining her passions for art and environmental activism to contribute to sustainability efforts worldwide and make a positive impact on our planet.