Photo credit: Evelyn Hockstein—The Washington Post/Getty
You might remember D.C. high school students, Bria Snell, India Skinner and Mikayla Sharrieff, the only all-female, all-Black team that were in the final round of NASA's Optimus Prime Spinoff Promotion and Research Challenge. For it, the 11th graders created a water filter that's designed to clean drinking water in schools. However, during public choice voting, the teens were targeted by racist online trolls who were trying to prevent them from winning the competition.
As a result, NASA had to close down the public choice voting and choose the winners according to the challenge's rubric. Despite the hacking attempt, the ladies went on to place second in the competition's 9-12th grade category. They also received a $4,000 grant from Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to continue their work.
Their latest work included helping 10-year-old Mari Copeny, known as Little Miss Flint, pass out water to residents of the Flint, Michigan community.
The racist tried to take them down but they still won the NASA challenge with their filter that removes lead from drinking water in schools. Now they are here in #Flint with me to pass out water. #BlackGirlMagic #WeAreTheFuture pic.twitter.com/w0DNkgvDb4
— Mari Copeny (@LittleMissFlint) June 23, 2018
The city has been without clean water for over 1,500 days, but thanks to Little Miss Flint and other volunteers, 150,000 bottles of water were handed out last week during a water distribution.
"To date we have distributed over 400,000 bottles of water," Mari tweeted out. "Everything raised goes right back to purchasing water for the residents of Flint. I plan to hit close a million bottles by September."
Keep leading, ladies!