In this YouTube interview, Shellee Howard introduces three rising high‑school seniors—Grace Jones, Jonan Talabu, and Vijay Arora—who have founded the "Aspire to Inspire" initiative and its off‑shoot, the "We Care Project." The trio combines their diverse academic interests (chemistry/math, biology/psychology, business/finance) to create a consolidated online resource hub for high‑school and middle‑school students navigating academics, college applications, career planning, and personal well‑being. Recognizing that foster‑care youth often lack internet access and mentorship, they shifted part of their effort to a printable booklet and a mentoring/pen‑pal program aimed at providing both academic guidance and emotional support. They have begun outreach to local foster‑care organizations (e.g., Thomas House, Stand Up for Kids) and are seeking additional student volunteers to serve as tutors, test‑prep helpers, or simply companions. Funding challenges for printing the booklets are also highlighted. The interview concludes with contact information (aspire2inspire.info and an email address) and an invitation for viewers to earn community‑service hours by joining the project.
Chapters
Hello, my name is Shellee Howard and I am the owner and founder of College Ready, and I have the opportunity to share with you 3 amazing high school ready-to-be seniors. So as we approach the summertime and you're thinking about what you're going to do or how you can help, please remember these 3 young people and they have lots of opportunity to share with you. So without further ado, I want to introduce you to Aspire to Inspire, the We Care Project. And we have Grace, Janan, and Vijay. And they're going to share with you what their plans are for their passion project and how they're going to impact our local organizations, people, and the surrounding area. So let's get started. Who are you and what are your interests and passions? Grace, would you like to start?
Yes, I would love to. I'm Grace Jones. I am a rising senior at Woodbridge High School. My interest is mainly in math and science, so kind of the chemistry field mainly. And I'm hoping to go more into that in the future. But overall, I really like to serve in general. So whether it be through helping during COVID-19 through the COVID-19 Relief Passion Project, or just finding little ways to do it throughout my community. I would also like to introduce our other co-founder, who is Jonan.
Hi, my name is Jonan Talabu. I'm also a rising senior at University High School. My interests are mainly in biology. I really like learning about human anatomy and how that affects human behavior, so a combination of biology and psychology. I really like learning about neuroscience and the way the human brain works. And I'm hoping to pursue a career in that type of major. Next, I'd like to introduce Vijay.
Hi, I'm Vijay Arora, and I'm going to be a senior at Yorba Linda High School. And my interests are mainly in business and finance. I have a lot of interest to go into the financial sector for my career, and Sorry.
You're good. You're all good. Keep going. You're great.
Um, I have a lot of interest in finance and business, and— but some of my hobbies are running, and I have a big, um, passion for kids because I've grown up with 3 little cousins. So I like trying to combine some of my interests and passions to help those around me because I like helping within my community. And for example, I started a fundraiser called Run for Impact where I raised money for a local homeless shelter for youth. So I really like just helping my community, and I hope I can do that through this project too.
Wonderful. As you can see, we have outstanding— if you knew their GPAs, it would blow your mind. We're not here for that right now, so I wanted to ask the next question. You all have such unique backgrounds. You have so many things that you want to do in the world and for your career. How do you work well together?
Um, I think this was one of the things when we first came together, we were trying to consider how can we use all of our interests to really make a big change. So all of us are really motivated students, so by bringing together all of our different interests, we're able to impact a lot of different areas instead of staying specialized only on one specific thing.
Right, and so because we want to help others, um, The way we can help is through a variety of subjects. So for example, I'm interested in psychology and biology. Grace is really interested in chemistry and math, and Vijay is interested in business. And so with all of those interests, we can come together and, you know, cover a vast array of subjects.
Yeah, and going off that, we all have the common interest of helping people and helping those around us, even though our career goals and our other interests are quite different. But those differences also help us within this project. Because we can focus on different things that maybe another person might not be suited for. And we really just come together great as a team.
Beautiful. So let's get into it. Let's talk about what have you started and what is your purpose?
So the first thing that we started was Aspire to Inspire. And so our main goal was to consolidate resources for any kind of high school or even younger students where they can learn more about how to do best in high school, how to best apply to college and find success in college, looking into careers, any kind of lifestyle, really anything that they might need to know during these years. Um, it's often overwhelming trying to find all of this on your own, so we just wanted to bring it all together in one location.
Right, so we started off with making a website and we consolidated a bunch of resources, as Grace said, and we stopped and had a moment where we had to think about who's the audience that needs this the most? And we realized that it was the people, the children who don't have the guide in their, the guides in their life that we have. So we had to kind of shift gears. And so we thought about changing our audience and we thought about maybe targeting foster care children who may not have the same guides that we have. So because of that, we started the We Care Project.
And through our process, like, and just applying to college and thinking about college, we all realized how difficult it is to find out the process and what you have to do in order to prepare for it. And we really just wanted to help other students, um, gain access to these resources and maybe make it less complicated for them. And because we have access to a lot of resources and help around us, but other students may not know how to gain access to these things. So we really want to consolidate that information. But like Janann said, we really had— we were learning a lot and we had to refocus our audience and see where we could make the best impact. And I think just learning and learning from your mistakes is one of the most important things we've learned from this.
There's many things to learn, right? Do you like to lead or follow? Is it fun to work in an area that you're not really truly passionate about? And I think, you You guys have done a wonderful job of really leading with your hearts. So tell me, why do you feel this is a necessary service and how do you think it will help others?
So as we said with Aspire to Inspire, our website really provides the platform where students don't have to spend all the time looking into unreliable resources or the plethora of things that are all over the internet that they're just bombarded with. So that kind of simplifies it all. And then going into the We Care project, we realized that the audience that really needs us the most may not have access to the internet or be able to access all of these resources at all. So we made it into a booklet format where they can just use the booklet as a basis to find the fundamentals to start on any of these categories. And I think one of the biggest things from the We Care project is being able to help both academically, as with COVID-19 they might have fallen behind, as well as emotionally because a lot of the summer activities might have been canceled, or they might not even be able to see their friends, or anything that could emotionally harm them even more than they might have been struggling in the past.
Yes, and additionally, we are creating kind of a mentoring program through the We Care project so that, you know, we, along with the booklets, we're able to create, have a group of high school students similar to ourselves come together and provide just As Grace said, like both academic support and emotional support. So this could be as simple as just being a pen pal to a child, like who wants to have someone to listen to them and like talk to them. And it could also mean tutoring. So this, we've been able to be in contact with different foster care programs and they've seemed to be, they've seemed to say that this is something that the children would really like. We're excited.
And Jennan kind of touched on this. We really wanted to find a way to provide these resources to students who might not have access to the internet and might not be able to access our website. So we formulated or created a booklet with all the information because there's so much stuff that middle schoolers, high schoolers, so much stuff that they have going on that they need to figure out, like how to do well in high school, how to prepare for college, what am I going to do when I grow up, what's my career going to be. And maintaining a healthy lifestyle as well. So we really just wanted to consolidate these resources, and we created a booklet where we wrote up all these resources with different places they can visit to find help and just information on how to live their best life and make a, make a good life for themselves.
You guys have the biggest hearts. It's just such a wonderful thing to have the opportunity to work with all of you. Can you talk a little bit about what you are currently working on as well as your needs Let's, let's talk about this is working, but you could use help here. What does that look like to you?
I think the biggest thing that we're doing right now is trying to establish ourselves in the local foster care world. So we've been contacting different organizations such as Thomas House and Stand Up for Kids to see where their need might be. And besides that, I think having more members be able to come with us. So having people who would be willing to come and hang out with these students or tutor them, or we can— they can choose between what they would want to do. It doesn't have to be one size fits all, but having a group of people who will come along with us would be able to make a much bigger impact than just the 3 of us would.
Yeah, and as Grace said, just like, um, I think the main thing we need right now is more students who are willing to be mentors and just be, you know, share their interests and work with the foster care kids alongside us.
Yeah, we really just want to help as many people as possible, but in order to do that, like, it's tough just the three of us. So it would really help, like, finding other people who are interested in helping those around them and those who are in need. And it's also with printing these booklets and trying to have the largest impact possible, it's tough to find the money to actually put into gathering all these resources for these people. So although we've done a lot, there's still a lot more to do, and finding more people and more resources is really helpful.
Wonderful. So in summary, you guys are looking to impact your community and help others to live a better life, to decrease stress, to enjoy life more. And so I would encourage anybody who gets to watch this video to reach out to these students. Grace, how can they reach you?
We have our website, which is aspire2inspire.info. And as well, we have our email address, which is always open, and that is aspire and then the number 2 inspi at and if they can contact us through either of those ways, then we can get them trained. We can teach them what we would be doing and partner them with any kids who may be interested in the area that they could provide.
So what you're telling me is you're doing all the work for other students to be able to get community service hours. Is that correct?
Basically. Right.
So if any of you listening need community service hours, I am giving you this great opportunity to work with 3 outstanding seniors. So anything else you want to add to the families who are listening?
Um, I wanted to add that anyone can join because we're providing a bunch of different services. So if you're really good at test taking, we were thinking about opening like an SAT/ACT test taking help kind of a thing. If you like school You could become a tutor. If you're just really friendly and kind, you could just become a pen pal or just a mentor. So like anyone who's thinking about joining, please feel free because there's definitely a place for you.
Yeah, just, I agree with Jonan there because it doesn't really matter what your interests are. There's always going to be someone who has similar interests. And these kids in these homeless shelters or development centers, all they really need is just someone to talk to because it's a tough time for everyone right now, but it's especially hard hitting to those youth in those centers, and just finding friends and finding someone to talk to is just really important. So anyone who's interested, please reach out.
Excellent. So thank you all for, you know, sharing your hearts and sharing your, your love of helping others, and we wish you all the best. Thank you so much, and we'll talk to you soon.
