2024 Middle School Winners

Sahil Parasharami is in the 8th grade at Central Middle School in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. He was introduced to the World of 8 Billion contest in his social studies class. He chose to focus on climate migration because he’s seen a lot of news about coastal communities like New York, Miami, San Francisco, and Mumbai being impacted by sea level rise. He was surprised to learn that over 410 million people worldwide could be displaced because of coastal flooding in 2100. This is the first video production contest that Sahil has participated in.

Sahil combined a lot of research with his passion for art to create a stop motion video. He used the app Procreate which has features that allowed him to create animations with ease. He has created videos on YouTube in the past with some basic editing, but this was his first time using the more advanced editing techniques required for a stop motion video. The most difficult part of the process was fitting all the information he wanted to share into the one-minute time limit. Sahil revised his script ten times before he started to record his video. His advice for future participants is to “perfect your script because it is the main part of your video. Once you have a good script it is so much easier to create and edit your video.”

In addition to being on his school’s speech and debate team, Sahil won second place in the junior Olympics for pickleball, is a state champion for ATA Taekwondo, and is an avid cricketer. He plans on using some of his prize money to buy a new cricket bat. His role model is Virat Kohli, an Indian cricket player, because he is physically fit, mentally strong, and strategic during the game. Sahil hopes to one day go to his dream college, MIT, to study aerospace engineering. Next year, Sahil would like to see a topic related to the conflicts that are going around the world. He said, “the main people that are affected by these conflicts are common citizens that have nothing to do with the cause of them. So many people seek refuge. How can we help them?”