The teenage years are often filled with milestones: getting a driver’s license, attending prom, acing the SATs. But for Hunter Pribyl-Huguelet, there’s another milestone on his list: changing the world.
After reading a statistic that 21,000 children die every day from starvation and other preventable causes, Pribyl-Huguelet was inspired to partner with Unicef’s “Believe in Zero” campaign and create Edina Against Infant Mortality and Starvation, or Edina AIMS. “I felt appalled that children could die from those causes in other parts of the world, especially given the prosperity we enjoy here,” he says. “I felt I needed to do my part.”
Since its inception two years ago, the club has raised more than $16,000 and fed approximately 150 children for a year thanks to numerous fundraisers, mainly involving the community. Some of these fundraisers have included movie nights, trick-or-treating events with local elementary schools, a fun run and a callout to local restaurants to help with the Tap Project, a Unicef project where restaurants give guests the option to donate $1 of their bill for clean water programs.
Besides running Edina AIMS (through which he has logged more than 500 volunteer hours in two years), Pribyl-Huguelet also runs TeensChangingtheWorld.org, a website that lists opportunities for teens to get involved in local humanitarian causes.
“It’s really important that people take an interest in improving the world,” he says. “If our small high school club has managed to feed 150 kids a year, I really think it’s possible for individual Americans to make a difference.”
