Student-Led Nonprofit Seeks to Build AI Literacy in Schools

December 4, 2025

Three Olin students—Anna Du ’28, Ramzey Burdette ’28, and Yunzhu Chen ’28—have founded a nonprofit called Ideas Become Impact that seeks to empower students in underserved communities to better understand the real-world uses of artificial intelligence (AI).

“The pace of AI development has been growing astronomically over the past few years,” says Du. “If school computer science curricula in communities with plenty of resources are barely keeping up, how are underserved communities supposed to handle this rapid growth? We created Ideas Become Impact to let students explore what it’s like to be interested in computer science and AI in a space that’s free of judgment and up to date with current trends.”

“Growing up in an underprivileged area, I didn’t realize until late into my high school career that I really liked computer science,” says Burdette. “If I had been given the opportunity to do this kind of work, I would have gotten into it much earlier, but I didn’t have the chance. With Ideas Become Impact, we’re hoping to give students that chance.”

Ideas Become Impact launched earlier this year with two public events, one at the Brockton Public Library and the other at the Waltham Boys & Girls Club. The team conducted interactive activities in which they measured the resting and active heart rates of young people who attended; then, using these data points and an AI model, they predicted each person’s heart rate while standing still.

Both events provided the Ideas Become Impact team opportunities to fine-tune their approach.

“The kids were really engaged with the photodiode we used to measure the heart rates,” says Chen. “Once they got interested, they would spend longer at the table.”

“We also learned that a lot of people get lost in technical terminology,” says Burdette. “It’s hard for people to stay engaged when they don’t understand, so we have gotten helpful advice from people about making sure we use layman’s terms.”

Since its inception, Ideas Become Impact has benefitted from support and advice from members of the Olin community on everything from how to fundraise for a nonprofit to how to properly conduct scientific studies. The nonprofit’s mission also mirrors the project-based learning core of Olin’s philosophy. 

“At Olin, we are learning how to turn the technical skills we are building into ideas that people can use and benefit from,” says Chen. “We want to inspire high school students who also have a cool idea and mentor them through how AI can be used to help them.”

Ideas Become Impact hopes to continue staging individual events with community partners, but their goal is to expand into multi-week programs for middle and high school students.

“These AI engagement events have been great to pique interest, but we’d love to create more robust projects in which a group of students helps guide the topic,” says Du. “We could help them use AI to implement a food drive matching program or something in public health, like identifying tumors. Anything they think might fill a need in their community.”

Even longer-term, Ideas Become Impact hopes to create a replicable model that could help start self-sufficient club chapters at multiple schools and organizations.

“This has been an amazing experience connecting what we’ve learned at Olin with community impact, and we’re excited to keep expanding,” says Du.

If you are interested in collaborating with or supporting Ideas Become Impact, please reach out to them at contact@ideasbecomeimpact.org.