Maya Lee, 15, from Wayland, spent part of her freshmen year on the varsity swim team at her high school, even going to the state championship. Then as she was preparing for her first season of softball, the coronavirus pandemic put a stop to her first year in high school.
Instead, the teenager put her time and energy into something new: starting a foundation to inspire kids around the world to help fight poverty and sickness, especially during the pandemic.
“We’re helping communities and we’re doing something that impacts, even if it’s just a little bit during this hard time," Lee said.
The foundation, known as Uniting Kids Against Poverty and Sickness or UKAPS, organized a food drive to donate to local food banks in Boston and bought meals from restaurants “and delivered them to the deserving health care workers working on the front lines" including nurses at Newton-Wellesley Hospital Cancer Ward, Lee said.
But she didn’t want to just stop there.
“One of the big keys in our foundation is to unite kids to help out during this pandemic,” she said. “I realized that the pandemic isn’t only affecting us here, it’s affecting people all over the country and even all over the world.”
The best way to do that, she said, was to reach out and inspire children in other cities to join the UKAPS team.
They have already inspired similar events in New York City, Sacramento, Honolulu, and Tulsa.
Nine more cities will join them this weekend, including Worcester, Princeton and two internationally in Hamburg, Germany and Halifax, Canada.
“Anyone can make difference. You just have to see what you can do to help,” she said. “There’s always a way to help during any time.”
Lee said she was inspired after spending the past 10 years helping her family organize a holiday gift drive for homeless families in New England.
“Personalizing these boxes and helping my dad collect and deliver these gifts, it’s just really made me happy to see that we’re making a difference,” she said. “And it makes me happy to see the smiles on their faces.”
So, while many people, including her dad, were still just trying to make sense of the pandemic and find normalcy, Lee was already thinking about how she could help others — just like they typically do during the holidays.
As states start to reopen, including Massachusetts, Lee continues to ask for donations and get people involved because she knows this isn’t the end of the road for her or UKAPS.
“Poverty and sickness is something that is a problem, around the world, even without this COVID pandemic,” she said. “When the coronavirus is gone one day, we still want to be able to help people and do our best to help as many people as possible.”
She might even turn it into a career one day.
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