Amazing Kids! Staff and Volunteers
Amazing Kids! of the Month
For those new to the Amazing Kids! website, our magazine is a great place to start is reading through some of the 12 years worth of Amazing Kids! of the Month (AKOM) stories in our archives. Be prepared to be inspired!
Please note that these stories are not about only the top geniuses and prodigies of the world (though we do feature stories about these kids too from time to time). Actually, our main purpose for featuring these stories about the amazing accomplishments of kids is to inspire more kids to start using their own unique gifts in positive and productive ways to accomplish their own amazing achievements.
Also be aware that these stories are not meant to be used by parents or kids for comparing one child with another; rather, we hope they will encourage parents, teachers and mentors to help their own child or students discover their own unique gifts and to help them nurture them, so they can one day realize their amazing potential (not to mention they may possibly even be featured as a future Amazing Kid! of the Month on our website!).
After working with these high achieving children and their parents for the past 12 years now, I want to share some encouraging news for parents to keep in mind:
These high achieving kids in our stories were not born achieving right out of the womb. Many, if not most of these kids are regular, every day kids who have been fortunate enough to have the support system they needed to achieve their goals and launch their dreams. It doesn’t take a degree in psychology to realize that with the right combination of love, nurturing support and access to resources, whether this be from family, teachers or other caring adult mentors, there is no limit to the amazing things our kids can do! (One brief example: As a first assignment for one of our newest Amazing Kids! reporters and staff members at the time, Olivia, age 14, I gave her the task of interviewing none other than Bill Gates. Little did any of us know that she in fact, would be able to get an exclusive Amazing Kids! interview with him! Just proof that our kids can accomplish anything they set their minds to, given the right amount of support.)
See Our AKOM Stories
Each of our Amazing Kids! of the Month have a unique story, viewpoint, and change they made on the world around them and we would love the chance to share those with you.
Check out our online magazine and visit our Amazing Kids! of the Month section and see this year’s Amazing Stories!
Dreams on the Launch Pad
Learn more about how you can help by taking a moment to read about the winners of this past year’s Launch My Dream! Design Contest, 6 year old Thalia Bernard of Lafayette, Louisiana and 10 year old Remmi Smith of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Support their dreams at our online store at: www.zazzle.com/amazingkids
Launch My Dream Initiative!
For those children who have big dreams, but don’t have a support system to help them launch their dreams, we have started a new initiative called Launch My Dream! The purpose of the initiative is to work in collaboration with others in our communities, across the country and beyond, to help kids in our communities get access to the resources and support they need to plan for and launch their dreams for their amazing future. Think about it: If every child had access to a support team to help them prepare for their future, how many more children would grow up to have the successful and fulfilling future they dream of as kids? Our goal and my personal dream is to make Launch My Dream! a national movement, energizing and inspiring our citizens to get involved in their local communities to support the dreams of their local kids. It’s exciting to think that these kids just may become the employers of tomorrow, or solve some of the world’s most pressing problems! Let’s give them the support they need now, and who knows what exciting and promising things the future will hold? Our kids and their future are counting on us.
We are helping both of this year’s winners, as well as last years winner, 10 year old Katie Stagiano (who was featured in People Magazine and on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams!), launch their amazing dreams to help other kids who are less fortunate than themselves. Be sure to visit our online store to purchase their winning t-shirt and apron designs to help them launch their dreams! Proceeds will benefit their causes and the Launch My Dream! initiative, so we can help more kids like these amazing girls launch their dreams in the future.
Amazing Kids! PenPals Program
For parents or teachers hoping to enhance their students’ literacy and communication skills, I invite you to register your students for a pen pal through our traditional letter writing, literacy based Amazing Kids! PenPals program. Not only does our literacy-based, traditional letter writing program help support literacy skills children are learning in the classroom, the program helps foster new friendships and a global awareness and understanding of other cultures and places in the world. Besides, it is so much fun for the kids to get letters, postcards and photographs of their pen pals in the mailbox! Learn more at: www.amazing-kids.org/penpals
Be a PenPal!
To register now for the Amazing Kids! PenPal Program we will need some more information about you, your Kid(s), and some of your preferences for a PenPal. Click HERE and get STARTED on being a PenPal!
Read and Enter!
With our Amazing Kids! work ranging from poetry writing to fiction and including spectacular interviews and international experiences; we encourage you to read all this and more at: www.amazing-kids.org/mag/
You can also enter our Amazing Kids! Contests – HERE! We have contests that encourage writing, cooking, and many other passions that you or any kids you know may have. Please encourage them to enter and be a part of the Amazing possibilities that each of these contests can bring for an Amazing Kid.
Amazing Kids! Magazine and Contests
We invite you to read through our kid-created, award-winning monthly Amazing Kids! Online Magazine. You think you’ll be impressed by the excellent quality of these well-written, thoughtful, and often thought-provoking articles and creative writing which our kids and teens from around the world contribute each month. Art lovers will want to check out the awe-inspiring portraits, paintings and photography created by some of our internationally acclaimed amazing young artists.
Each month provides our readers, young and old alike, with yet another exciting opportunity to enrich their lives through reading our kid-created publication. We hope you’ll take the time to read it with your own child or children, or if you are a teacher or youth group leader, your students.
The Amazing Kids! website was recently honored to be selected as one of the Top 24 Great Web Sites for Kids by the American Library Association (ALA), specifically under the category: Writing by Kids.
Amazing Kids! Contests
Amazing Kids! offers fun and challenging creative contests on our website on an ongoing basis HERE.
Our contests are known as one of the best online resources for kids contests! We offer fun prizes when sponsors are available for our contests, as well as feature the winning entries in our Amazing Kids! Online Magazine.
Be sure to REGISTER for our free eNewsletter, to keep up to date on the latest news, including contests news from Amazing Kids!
Alyse Rome, Founder and President, founded Amazing Kids! (amazing-kids.org) in 1998, to provide kids with a positive, uplifting voice that would help them find purpose, hope and a direction in life.
A former teacher, Alyse instinctively knew that one of the best ways to teach and inspire children to become achievers is by giving them access to the success stories about their peers (thereby countering the ill effects which too much exposure to the negative, sensationalist news about kids too often found in the mainstream media can have on kids). She began researching, writing and publishing the first Amazing Kids! of the Month stories for the amazing-kids.org website when it first launched in 1998. Almost immediately, the world started taking note of these Amazing Kids. Within the first four months after launching, Alyse got a call from the producers of the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, who invited one of the first Amazing Kids to appear on the show with Jay Leno. In the months that followed, Oprah invited another Amazing Kid on her show, Brandon Keefe, co-founder of BookEnds, and gave Brandon and his organization $250,000 worth of books.
Today the amazing-kids.org website continues to be known worldwide as the number one online resource for stories about amazing kids. Educational publishers regularly license the website’s content for use in educational textbooks and other educational media in countries around the world. The website is featured as an educational enrichment resource in the Renzuilli Learning System used in classrooms around the world.
As publisher of the award-winning, kid-created Amazing Kids! Online Magazine, Alyse supervises the production of the content for the web-based publication. Since first launching the online publication in 2000, she has had the privilege to work as a mentor, cheerleader and #1 fan of the countless children and teens who have worked on the student editorial team over the years. One of Alyse’s proudest moments was having her student staff’s amazing work recognized as one of the Top 24 “Great Web Sites for Kids†for 2010 by the American Library Association.
Alyse has also served as an advisor for By Kids For Kids in Stanford, Connecticut, and is a frequent consultant for the Entertainment Industry, helping to cast or book appearances on numerous television shows featuring amazing kids, including interstitials on Disney Channel (Check This Kid Out) and PSB Go, as well as for television shows such as Ellen, Martha, The Bonnie Hunt Show, and Cartoon Network among others.
Alyse graduated with high honors and a B.A. in Theatre Arts from Cal State University Fullerton, and received her teaching credentials from University of California, Irvine, where she received a Paul Douglas scholarship for her studies. Upon graduating, Alyse taught elementary school in Orange County, California, prior to receiving a fellowship to attend Boston University for her graduate studies in International Relations and International Communications. A former award-winning actress and champion fencer, Alyse ranked 2nd individually in the Southern California Intercollegiate Fencing Conference and lead her team at C.S.U.F. to a first place victory. A published author, Alyse worked in the software industry as a marketing executive before leaving the “for-profit†world to follow her passion: helping kids achieve their dreams.
Alyse believes all children have amazing potential and unique gifts which need to be nurtured and supported so they can have the bright future they deserve. She encourages caring and concerned adults to reach out and help kids in their local communities to prepare for their amazing future, by starting them on the positive path towards achievement today.
Alyse lives with her family in the beautiful Pacific Northwestern state of Washington.