2023 High School Winners

Arnav Bali is in the 9th grade at South River High School in Edgewater, Maryland. He is a three- time World of 8 Billion winner and continues to participate in the contest because he enjoys the challenge and it also provides him with an opportunity to showcase the new things he has learned each year. When he found out that climate change was one of the global topics he was excited to share a solution he found that could help combat it. Prior to creating his video, he learned about the many ways that climate change could impact a growing population and was surprised to learn the amount of water from the ice caps that was melting into the oceans every second. He said that “climate change impacts all of us and requires a lot of resources, which is a great way to bring us together” to find solutions.

Arnav is a self-taught film-maker; he watches tutorials on YouTube to increase his editing skills. He loves using editing techniques “to enhance the message that [he] is putting forward,” in his videos. The most challenging part of the process for Arnav was creating the script. He shared how important the script is to creating your story and said that “if you don’t pay attention [to your script] you can deviate from your original goal.” Some advice he has for future participants is to really think about how the visuals in your video help present and enhance your ideas. Arnav plans on using his prize money to purchase additional resources to help improve his production quality. Besides creating videos for the World of 8 Billion contest, Arnav has created a video for why he should be a class officer and a video on inflation for the Stossel in the Classroom video contest.

Arnav is inspired by other contest creators he sees on social media. He is motivated to continue to film by watching the process of how others tell their stories in an engaging and informative way. When Arnav is not creating videos, he is active on his school’s tennis team, the acting Parliamentarian of the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) team, and serving as an officer in his school government. He is interested in finance and computer science but also wants to learn about other fields as he continues high school.