27 FCPS Students Honored With 2025 Student Peace Awards
Students from 27 Fairfax County public schools have been named recipients of the 2025 Student Peace Awards of Fairfax County, designed to recognize young people who work as peacemakers.
The Student Peace Awards of Fairfax County began in 2006 as a way to encourage people to think more about peace as both a means and an end, and to recognize young people who work as peacemakers. Every year, the high schools in Fairfax County are asked to select one junior or senior, or a group of students, whose work has promoted peace. The project is organized by volunteers and funded by donations from 15 secular and religious sponsoring organizations.
The 2025 recipients are:
Sage Nagle, Annandale High School . Through her participation as a Student Equity Ambassador Leader and Superintendent Student Advisory Council member, Sage Nagle works with school staff across the county to bring equality to those around her and to prevent disparities based on race, gender, or ability. She organizes Annandale High School’s Inclusion Revolution Week and Heritage Night which provide an opportunity for Annandale students to share their cultures while bringing the Annandale community together in celebration and support.
She is the president of Annandale's Special Olympics program and has organized events such as FanQuest, a celebration that invites the entire school to cheer for Special Olympics athletes. She also works with students and staff from across the county to ensure that students of all backgrounds feel supported and respected.
Jayden Lee, Centreville High School. Jayden Lee established a Centreville High School chapter of Amnesty International in which club members learn about and advocate for human rights. He is also the vice president of the school’s Liberty in North Korea club which supports North Korean refugees through advocacy and fundraising. As the president of the school’s UNICEF club, he helps to organize fundraisers that assist children in poverty and promote awareness of their needs.
In one such event, the “Water Walk,” students walk about two miles carrying a gallon of water, raising money for UNICEF while helping people concretely understand some of the challenges faced by children who have to walk long distances to obtain water for household needs. In addition, he is also helping to put together a database of local services and resources to make the information more accessible for students who are in need.
Nila Elangovan, Chantilly High School. In the summer of 2024, Nila Elangovan created a non-profit organization called The N-Lighten English Tutoring Program to help underprivileged students in grades 5-8 who struggle with the fundamentals of English reading, writing and speaking. The program currently has twelve students of diverse backgrounds. The student leaders dedicate five to seven hours each week to develop a curriculum that includes homework, slideshows, class projects and games that enhance social interaction, mini-quizzes to ensure a thorough understanding of content, and the structured lessons that they run twice a week. Nila notes that extra tutoring help has traditionally been something that only well-to-do families could afford, and she wanted to be able to provide free tutoring help to those who faced financial barriers.
Mia Martin-Escandarani, Edison High School . Mia Martin-Escandarani has been working to counter antisemitism through dialogue and education. As part of the Jewish Community Relations Council Student-to-Student program, she participates in conversations that allow space for respect, curiosity, and empathy between groups. She is a student ambassador and docent for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
She is also participating in the StandWithUs Kenneth Leventhal High School Internship program for student leaders who want to proactively impact their local schools and communities. Exchanges with people who disagree with her can be hard, but she has learned to remain calm and says, “Silence allows evil to take place. None of us can be bystanders. We must do something!”
Fairfax High School, Kiran Ashok. Kiran Ashok learned the basics of engineering, programming, problem-solving, and teamwork as a competitor in events organized by FIRST Robotics . Kiran taught online coding classes and began to think about robotics as more of an opportunity to reach out and teach new students rather than just to compete for herself.
She co-founded FIRST For Youth in 2021, a non-profit that deploys high school volunteers weekly to some of Fairfax County’s low-income Title 1 schools to introduce FIRST robotics programs. So far, 58 volunteers have tallied 625 volunteer hours, started 15 tech teams, and raised a total of $22,445, with a combined impact on 23,50 students and families across northern Virginia.
Shri Bala, Falls Church High School. Shri Bala has worked at Falls Church High School and on a national level to promote sustainability and equity in urban architecture. She founded high school chapters of the American Institute of Architecture Students and of Habitat for Humanity, in which students help construct homes. She also founded GOLD2GREEN, working with her school’s engineering department to design and obtain equipment to create self-watering planter buckets to grow vegetables.
Through a partnership with Hands on Harvests, buckets and instructions were distributed to more than 80 Falls Church families to enable them to grow their own food. She self-published a book, Kai’s Dream, to raise children’s awareness of environmental and urban sustainability. And last year, she spoke on a national stage on minority representation and studio resource inequality in the architecture industry.
Ava Saunders and Grace Varughese, Hayfield Secondary School
Ava Saunders and Grace Varughese are the co-presidents of the Hayfield chapter of SDA - Students Demand Action - a nonpartisan organization that works to end gun violence, advocating for common-sense firearm legislation, promoting safe and secure storage of firearms, and endorsing political candidates based on their gun policies rather than on party affiliation.
Ava and Grace have encouraged students in other schools to start their own SDA chapters, and they join marches and network with other organizations. They also went to Richmond for SDA’s advocacy day and received a standing ovation from a crowd of 300 as they pointed out that guns are the number-one cause of adolescent deaths and that students should feel safe at school.
Clarissa Dantes, Herndon High School. Clarissa Dantes joined with her friend Sidney Ide to establish the Asian American Club at Herndon High School to assist other students feeling alone and disconnected from their heritage. They meet regularly for activities that help them learn about the many different Asian cultures.
The club’s main goal is to provide opportunities for bonding, acceptance, and mutual support among Asian American students. The club has created a safe space where students can feel included and have positive, candid, and constructive conversations.
Muslim Student Association, Justice High School . The Muslim Student Association (MSA) at Justice fosters community for Muslims and educates their fellow students about Islam and Islamic culture. They held posters at International Night to raise awareness of the tragedies in the war-torn regions of Sudan and Palestine. This year, they plan to read a poem to shed light on the plight of those suffering in Gaza.
They organized a school-approved demonstration to spread awareness about Palestine that was attended by a few hundred students, both Muslim and non-Muslim. A video of the event received some hostile comments online, but members of the club did not respond in kind. Club President Dania Eldirdiri says, “Instead of meeting hostility with hostility, we wanted to have a conversation. We took time to respond to comments with the message that Islam is a religion of peace.”
Manas Puri, Lake Braddock High School . Manas Puri believes that “there are many ways to think about peace” and has demonstrated it by the panoply of volunteer activities on which he has worked. His Eagle Scout project was to organize litter cleanup and the development of a community garden in his neighborhood’s common area. He serves on a Lake Bracddock committee promoting diversity and inclusion.
For the honor society, he serves as Community Service Coordinator planning, organizing, and monitoring student community service projects. Last summer, Manas volunteered with the US Department of Education in the Office of Civil Rights. Over this school year, as an intern with Leadership Initiatives, he raised money for medical equipment for a Nigerian hospital and had worked with a team to support an impoverished entrepreneur in Nigeria.
Anniyah Rizvi, Langley High School . Anniyah Rizvi was one of ten students in the United States – five Jewish and five Muslim – chosen to participate in Writopia Lab’s Connecting Across Cultures initiative. The students met for eight weeks by Zoom to exchange their experiences, including incidents of antisemitism and islamophobia in their schools and communities.
Their written expressions in the form of stories, poems and narratives are contained in a book: Connecting Across Cultures: A Collection of Writing by Ten Jewish and Muslim American Teens, published last year . During her sophomore year, Anniyah founded the international online youth literary magazine, Words With Weight . The magazine, with four annual editions, is centered on social justice, politics and introspection and has featured hundreds of contributors from more than 40 countries.
Madison McLaughlin, John R. Lewis High School . Madison McLaughlin co-founded Lewis High School’s chapter of Students Demand Action, a youth activist group committed to ending gun violence. The Lewis chapter partnered with the local Moms Demand Action group to distribute a hundred gun safety locks at a community event shortly after the Apalachee High School shooting in 2024.
During the 2024 election campaign, Madison organized and participated in “Get Out the Vote” canvassing efforts for a member of Congress who believes in sensible gun reform, and organized around twenty students to phone bank in the final days leading up to the election.
Hunter Guthrie, Madison High School . Hunter Guthrie has been personally baking and preparing bagged meals for the Embry Rucker Shelter since middle school. He went on to approach first Panera and then other local businesses to donate their unsold food and began transporting it to the shelter several times a week. Many other students now join Hunter in addressing food insecurity.
Using the County’s reporting system for volunteer hours, Hunter has solicited the help of over 300 private school, public school, and home-schooled teens from Fairfax County. Not only has his work benefited people in need of food, he has done research that was presented throughout Virginia to show that food waste, through conversion to methane, is an important contributor to the climate emergency.
Ghalia Sakly, Marshall High School . Ghalia Sakly grew up in Tunisia speaking French and experienced the social isolation of coming to a new country and not speaking the language. As a leader of the Marshall High School Ambassadors Club, she has worked with new students to help them navigate the school environment and make friends. She is also a member of the UNICEF Club, which has collaborated with the Ambassadors to collect food and coats to help people in need in the local community.
She also started the Music Gives Back Club which gets together to make music but also to talk about current events and reach out to help others such as people affected by Hurricane Milton last year.
Bushra Ehikhamenor, McLean High School . Bushra Ehikamenor is a social activist and student leader in McLean High School’s Muslim Student Association, coordinating guest speakers and helping to organize the annual interscholastic competition. She helped organize a student demonstration at McLean High School to bring attention to the needs and rights of refugees and immigrants.
Bushra also uses her Instagram site to communicate her personal insights on the difficulty experienced by civilian communities affected by war, including the plight of civilians and refugees in Gaza. Bushra is also active at her mosque, providing food services to families in need.
Jennifer Villalobos-Saenz, Mount Vernon High School . Jennifer Villalobos-Saenz uses her interest in health and medicine along with her bilingual background to help other people. She advocates for health literacy and health issues in her community. She has presented information about high blood pressure to local community members.
She co-founded the Medical Majors Club at Mount Vernon High School for students interested in the medical field. She helped with a blood drive, assisting with the work and encouraging peers to donate. Leveraging her bilingual background, Jenny also tutors elementary and middle school students in her neighborhood.
Mountain View High School, Julia DeVera. When she was 11 years old, Julia DeVera was diagnosed with alopecia areata, a disease that affects people of all ages, genders, and racial and ethnic backgrounds. She has used her experience to become an advocate for better awareness of mental and physical health. Last summer, Julia was trained as a legislative liaison for the National Alopecia Areata Foundation, spreading the word on Capitol Hill.
As an artist, she uses her skills and talent to create works that represent the struggles associated with the disease. She has also taken on the role of youth mentor to help younger students understand that they do not have to be afraid or hide. She tells them, “You don’t need to be fixed, cause you’re not broken.”
Isaac Rodriguez, Oakton High School. Isaac Rodriguez’s love of fishing and respect for the sport when done with care for the environment motivated him to establish the Oakton Fishing Interest Club in his junior year.
The club collects donated fishing equipment and plans to post signs near the fishing ponds encouraging attention to the environment. Isaac hopes that the club will encourage other students to fish and experience the inner peace that can come from fishing and being outside on the water.
Jonathan Johnston, Quander Road School. Jonathan “JJ” Johnston finds inner peace in his artistic work that has produced a positive influence on all aspects of his life and on the people around him. The school staff report that his positive leadership has resulted in his ability to calm down students and to help his classmates understand that avenues other than anger can help them get out of negative situations.
His ability to admit fault, ask forgiveness, and offer understanding and forgiveness to others is admired by his teachers, as is his ability to place himself in other people’s shoes so that he can understand their point of view.
Jasmine Sklarew, Robinson Secondary School. Jasmine Sklarew directed, wrote, and edited “Ghost Girl: Three Stories, One Reality,” a professional-quality short film that presents three young women who describe personal experiences that highlight ways girls are often criticized, limited, and even abused. It was an all-female student project. Both male and female viewers of “Ghost Girl” indicated that the film’s examples helped them to better understand the issues many girls face.
Jasmine is also part of the Founders Ensemble at Precipice Theater Team, which seeks to develop collaborative productions featuring social action issues to spark dialogue among viewers from diverse backgrounds. She is helping the nonprofit to develop a film division to create films on social action issues.
Ghazi “Zizo” Hanania, South County High School. Ghazi Zizo Hanania has been advocating for an end to the war in Ghaza. He and a group met with State Department officials responsible for Middle East and Palestinian issues and diplomacy. He has created a website highlighting the suffering of the Palestinian people and the daily bombing Gaza has endured.
He wants to use this website to help people understand what residents of Gaza are going through. He hopes that awareness of the bombing and the destruction of infrastructure, homes, hospitals, and the resulting mass starvation will help everyone see that the only true path toward peace is to end war.
Jahnavi Nandanavanam, South Lakes High School . Jahnavi Nandanavanam participated as a violinist in the three-day 2023 Global Festival held on the Mall in Washington DC, which was attended by 400,000 people and broadcast all over the world. The goal for the festival is “to create a visible, public forum to celebrate our differences.”
Jahnavi was part of a 250 person Indian Classical Symphony joined by 600 dancers. She commented that, “We were celebrating the unity of humans and showing how we can overcome conflict through sharing our culture and artistic diversity. A worldwide audience sees that peace can begin through cultural exchange and understanding.”
TJ Send-a-Smile Club, Yusra Wahidi, Claire Guo, Hasset Bekele, Maria Peralta, Marla Wisniewski, Sahra Abrar, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Dedicated to supporting their school and wider community and building positive relationships with established groups and individuals, the TJ Send-a-Smile Club uplifts and empowers others by sending smiles and messages of compassion and solidarity.
Club members have found numerous opportunities to provide practical and emotional support to others, including people with breast cancer, younger students at nearby elementary schools, the TJ bus drivers, women at a nearby shelter, and Moroccan citizens after a devastating earthquake. In the words of the club’s leaders, “A smile is a universal language of care and connection. Our mission is to share that connection and bring light to those who need it most.”
Salaiha Najeeb, West Potomac High School . Salaiha Najeeb is president of West Potomac’s Muslim Student Association and founded and leads the Marhaba Club, which helps immigrant students feel more welcome and provides school supplies to those who cannot afford them. She initiated cricket games to help students from South Asia to feel more at home. She mentors younger students, offering leadership and academic advice.
She also helped establish a room for students to pray and meditate. She has brought together students from several clubs including the Muslim Student Association, the Jewish Student Club, the Black Student Union, and the Hispanic Leadership Association for meetings and socializing, seeking to negotiate differences and tensions among students of different religious and national backgrounds.
Simeon Samuel, West Springfield High School. Growing up in Ethiopia, Simeon Samuel witnessed the devastating impact of violence firsthand when armed forces attacked civilians in his neighborhood. This left a lasting impression and ignited his commitment to support those affected by conflict. As Vice President of West Springfield High School’s Spartans for War Victims, Simeon has channeled his drive into meaningful action. Working with several aid groups, he helped organize efforts to collect and distribute clothing, school supplies, and hygiene kits to war-torn regions including Ethiopia. He led a letter-writing campaign to the U.S. Congress, advocating for increased humanitarian assistance for war victims globally. He and the club worked with Muslim student associations across Fairfax County to invite soccer players from 30 schools to participate in a fundraiser that raised $5,000 for humanitarian relief. In addition, Simeon is now the Executive Director of GIVE Youth, which provides free tutoring and mentorship to over 3,000 students.
Westfield United Sports, Caroline Elson, Lilly Wilson, Charlie Ewell, Blake Sanders, Joey Wyatt, Westfield High School. Westfield Unified Sports works to promote community-building and inclusiveness between Westfield’s general student population and students with disabilities, who often feel isolated or alienated from the other students. Unified Sports promotes understanding and inclusiveness through a shared participation in sports. In its second year as a club at Westfield, the mission of United Sports is to provide training and athletic competition in a variety of sports for students of all abilities. The hope is that participation in this program will create unique teammate bonds through sports experiences just like any other sports team, and promote inclusion, acceptance and understanding that everyone is different and brings value to our club and to sports.
Harun Khan, Woodson High School. As a son of immigrants from Pakistan, Harun Khan is keenly aware of the challenges that come with adjusting to life in the United States. In response, he has tutored three children of recent immigrants in English. Another interest of Harun’s is using technology to help people. He is developing a web-based application that helps people prevent food waste in their homes by donating soon-to-expire food to local food banks. Harun also serves as the media manager for Woodson’s Environmental Club, which has worked alongside master gardeners to grow, harvest, and donate close to 1,000 pounds of produce to local food bank Food for Others.
More information about the Student Peace Awards is available online .
