VICTOR YE
UNITED STATES, 18
Project: UnTextbooked
Cofounders: Anya Dua and Jana Amin
Basic Human Needs: Education
In 2018 Victor founded InnovaYouth – a nonprofit organization to empower young people to affect societal change. Working with young people from diverse backgrounds opened Victor’s eyes to the urgent need for a range of narratives in history education. Students needed new ways to learn history, historical research, journalism and storytelling. In March 2020 Victor worked with two peer activists to launch UnTextbooked – a history podcast for the future. UnTextbooked builds a community of diverse, talented young people in media and creates high quality history lessons with civic impact. Teens produce and interview famous historians, leading intergenerational conversations that explore history with depth and vividness that most textbooks lack. Season 1 of UnTextbooked was downloaded by 5,000+ young people in the United States, used by 80+ teachers to make their classes more engaging, and evolved into a history curriculum used in Massachusetts, New York and Maryland. Recently, UnTextbooked was recognized by Spotify as a Next Wave Podcast Top Charts for Student Podcasts, was featured by PBS, Newswire and Vice News, and nominated for this year’s Peabody Awards. In 2021 UnTextbooked will be distributed to tens of thousands of students in Europe and there are plans to launch Season 2 and expand UnTextbooked into a production company. Victor and those close to him predict he will be his country’s first major Asian American talk show host, spreading his passion for conversation, diversity and connection.