Teddy Talks: Anne Wojcicki
Anne Wojcicki is the cofounder and CEO of 23andMe, a pioneering direct-to-consumer genetics testing firm based in South San Francisco, California valued at more than 400 million dollars. Submit questions for our upcoming Teddy Talks with her!
Cultural Immersion Gallery (Little Mentors x The World In Us)
Little Mentors is collaborating with The World in Us on a cultural immersion gallery centered around the prompt "Describe a cultural tradition that is important to you." We are accepting submissions for the gallery between October 2-December 31.
Some ideas of things you can submit to the gallery include:
1. Visual Art (collage, 2D, pottery, etc...)
2. Written pieces (personal memoir, prose, memoir, poem, etc...)
3. Dance
4. Music (voice, instrument, etc...)
5. Photo
6. Podcast
7. Family recipes
Our Programs
To learn more about Little Mentors, you can find some of our initiatives and events down below.
One of Little Mentors’s biggest motives is to create mutualistic relationships. When people across the world learn from each other, diverse perspectives and unique points of views are learned that can help shape our views on the world. Here, a Little Mentors sister school in Brazil teaches students about the density of liquids! You can find more Little Mentors videos here.
Little Mentors visited an orphanage in Costa Rica and cultivated friendships with the students while also spreading smiles after giving the school supplies a local middle school collected in a drive.
We raised over $250,000 for COVID-19 relief during the height of the pandemic in India. The money we fundraised sent essential oxygen concentrators and ventilators to hospitals in and around Delhi.
We collected hundreds of books for Variety Phila and helped sell raffle tickets at their Let Them Eat Cake event.
We hosted multiple bingo sessions with the Ronald McDonald House and donated art supplies we collected in a local drive. We also gave many paintings to our local house from an event we hosted where children got to paint different types of teddy bears.
We hosted a book drive where we collected hundreds of books in our "Little Mentors Book Bin" in association with Book Smiles. Different students in Little Mentors all had the book bin within their neighborhood for our neighborhood relay race in the summer of 2020.
We worked with the Cherry Hill Public Library to host a coding event where we taught students how to do Scratch in a fun and engaging lesson.
With Hearts of Skylar, we collected over 50 school supplies and backpacks for the City of Camden Division for Youth Services.
With performing-heARTs, we worked to expand our musical therapy sessions with the Voorhees Pediatric Center through annual collaborative fundraisers so we could bring smiles to children through the power of music.
We had another Teddy Talks Event with Holocaust survivor, Alice Sondike, to educate students and empower students to share her story and have a true insight into history.
Our first ever Teddy Talks Event was with speakers Peter Buffett, Reut Ringel, and Jenn Halweil, which inspired the leaders of tomorrow with inspiring stories and answers to live questions.
Anti-racism initiative
Partnering with the New Jersey Governor’s office, Little Mentors hosted a global anti-racism multimedia initiative that brought together students (high school and undergraduate) to discuss racism in our community and the world at large and ways younger generations can help enact change and educate themselves.
Teddy Talks Events
Little Mentors has hosted with Teddy Talks Events with the esteemed leaders and role models of today’s world— the leaders of today empower the leaders of tomorrow. Past speakers have included Mark Cuban; Anne Wojcicki; New York Times best-selling author, Emmy Award winner, and philanthropist Peter Buffett; Holocaust Survivor Alice Sondike; Broadway actors Danette Holden and Eric Sciotto; Shark Tank featured CEO and founder Shaan Patel; co-founder of Dormify Amanda Zuckerman; and more.
We brought together local and international students from India to share passions, stories, and smiles. We got to see musical performances, students singing songs, dances, and the meaning of "empowering and motivating one friend at a time."
Little Mentors students visited New Delhi, India, to meet the students they contacted previously over Zoom. It was an incredible experience to learn about each other and build their friendships.
After raising over $1,000 in a bake sale conducted by a local high school's chapter of Little Mentors, the students in India smile with the gifts and supplies given to them through the fundraiser.
Spreading our mission in high schools
High schools act as chapters for Little Mentors, carrying on the mission to the next generation of change-makers and visionaries of the future.
Some initiatives have included….
Fundraising for Little Mentors initiatives (almost $1,400 through a bake sale for supplies for our sister India school)
Blanket-making events for local shelters and non-profit organizations
Virtual reading events to motivate local elementary schoolers in incorporating literacy in their lives
Card making events for local hospitals and pediatric centers
School district-wide coloring projects (collaboration between elementary schoolers and high schoolers) for ColorASmile
And more!
We organized calls with our friends from Mexico to talk about present-day topics like stereotypes, current events, and the similarities and differences of living life in different areas in the world.
We met with our friends from Mexico in New York City for a Little Mentors reunion!
We talked to our friends in Mexico and talked about different trends in Mexico and the United States (ex: played Wordle!) and even worked on language development skills for emerging Spanish and English learners.
In this call, Little Mentors brought together students from the United States, Mexico, and Nepal to cultivate discussion on everyone’s unique and diverse cultures while also helping foster a global perspective for all attendees.
Using music to bring smiles
Through musical therapy sessions for local pediatric sessions and partnerships with organizations like Performing HeARTS (raised more than $3,000 in our annual musical therapy events), Little Mentors has worked to use music to spread smiles to children.
