Kid of the Year Over 750,000 bars of soap donated to schools, old age homes, frail care centres
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The 2024 TIME’s Kid of The Year is on a mission few his age would even dare. At only 15, Heman Bekele is developing a soap that has the potential to treat and even prevent skin cancer!

 

Global (27 August 2024)—TIME Magazine has named and famed its 2024 ‘Kid of the Year’—a giant’s title recognising an exceptional young person who’s giving the future hope!

This year’s ‘Kid of the Year’ is a teen on a mission far beyond his years. At just 15 years old, Heman Bekele, based in Virginia, USA, has not only dreamt of developing a way to treat skin cancer affordably and accessibly but has actually put his dream into action and developed a solution.

As TIME informs, “[Heman] is recognised for developing an affordable compound-based bar of soap that could in the future be a new and more accessible way to deliver medication to treat skin cancers, including melanoma.”

Heman has been fascinated by science since he was four years old when he began cooking up ‘potions’—concoctions of household items like dish soap or laundry detergents thrown together to simply see what would happen (if anything).

As he got older, Heman moved on to chemistry sets, then science classes, tons of his own research and last year in a massive leap— winning a Young Scientist Challenge for a remarkable project: a soap that had the potential to treat skin cancers, or even prevent them.

All eyes were soon on Heman’s soap idea, both for its potential (that earned nods from many experts) and for the fact that its maker was only 15. Not too much later down the line, the young scientist was afforded the chance to work at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s labs to further develop his ‘hope soap’!

Drawn toward skin cancer research and inspired by conditions in his home country of Addis Ababa, where he had grown up seeing many people at work under the unforgiving sun, Heman began investigating treatment solutions.

He wanted to see if certain treatments used to fight tumours could be made more accessible to those facing earlier stages of cancer and if there was a way that the costs linked to these treatments could be cut.

Speaking to TIME, he explains how he decided on bars of soap:

“What is one thing that is an internationally impactful idea, something that everyone can use, [regardless of] socioeconomic class? Almost everyone uses soap and water for cleaning. So soap would probably be the best option.”

For many months, Heman has been able to conduct professional research in labs alongside other scientists and mentors who are helping him with their expertise.

While there’s still a very long way to go before the hope soap will be ready for any sort of approvals, the kind of determination guiding his path forward might just mean that Heman could change the world before he’s even18.

“A lot of people have this mindset that everything’s been done, there’s nothing left for me to do. To anybody having that thought, [I’d say] we’ll never run out of ideas in this world. Just keep inventing. Keep thinking of new ways to improve our world and keep making it a better place.” —Heman Bekele.

TIME August 26 Cover, Photograph by Dina Litovsky

Sources: TIME 
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About the Author

Ashleigh Nefdt is a writer for Good Things Guy.

Ashleigh's favourite stories have always seen the hidden hero (without the cape) come to the rescue. As a journalist, her labour of love is finding those everyday heroes and spotlighting their spark - especially those empowering women, social upliftment movers, sustainability shakers and creatives with hearts of gold. When she's not working on a story, she's dedicated to her canvas or appreciating Mother Nature.

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