Student Teams Bolstering Mental Health and Nonprofit Tech Take $10K Top Prizes at Do Good Challenge

A student-led nonprofit working to normalize conversations about mental health and suicide within the Black community, and a student organization developing free technology solutions for nonprofits each took home the $10,000 top prize at the University of Maryland’s 14th annual Do Good Challenge on Thursday.

Four other finalists shared another $20,000 in prize money at the pitch competition, which drew more than 500 students, staff, faculty and community members to the Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center to hear six teams make the case for why their work is changing the world.

UMD President Darryll J. Pines opened the evening by reflecting on how transformative ideas take shape: “Every big change starts with a single spark of an idea. Here at the University of Maryland, the world's first Do Good campus, we fan that spark by combining passion with purpose and fuel with hands-on experiences, funding opportunities, contests and other resources to make sure that our students don't just dream of a better world. They actually make it happen.”

The Black People Die by Suicide Too team took home the top $10,000 prize in the Founders track, as well as the $2,500 Audience Choice Award. The organization, cofounded in 2023 by Department of Communication graduate student T-Kea Blackman, offers peer support groups and workshops and has a podcast that has surpassed 20,000 downloads. It has participated in more than 50 community events, reaching over 5,000 Marylanders, and raised more than $150,000 to sustain its work. 

Blackman, herself a suicide attempt survivor, said that Black Americans have some of the fastest-growing suicide rates in this country.  “For Black men ages 15 to 24, suicide is the second-leading cause of death. And our beautiful brown babies, ages 5 to 12, are twice as likely to die by suicide as their white peers,” Blackman said. “Ten thousand dollars may not seem like much, but to us and to the people we serve, it is the difference between hopelessness and hope. It is how we keep people alive."

The second-place Founders prize of $5,000 went to New Generation Myanmar, an international online school serving students across all 14 states and regions of Myanmar in the aftermath of the country’s 2021 military coup. Co-founder Aung Khant Pyae and Student Development Adviser David Lebedco ’26 both from the Robert H. Smith School of Business described how more than 6 million students lost access to safe education following the coup. 

"This is … about an entire generation losing their hope and future,” said Aung. In just two years, New Generation Myanmar has served over 3,400 students, generated more than 60,000 instructional hours, employed over 100 staff members, and distributed more than $260,000 in scholarships. 

The $2,500 third-place Founders prize went to Nurture Natives, a youth-led nonprofit co-founded by first-year environmental science and policy student Esther Bonney. Bonney, who turned to nature for solace after losing her brother at a young age, built the organization around a simple but urgent observation: Today's kids spend less than 30 minutes outside each day, and the landscapes they do venture into are increasingly stripped of native plants and the biodiversity that depends on them. In four years, Nurture Natives has educated more than 10,000 youth, restored 420 acres of habitat, planted over 2.5 million seeds and distributed 70,000 native plants across all 24 counties in Maryland.

Computer science majors  Aaryan Patel ’25, M.S. ’26 and Krishnan Inban Tholkappian ’26 accepted the $10,000 first-place prize in the Leaders track on behalf of Hack4Impact UMD, which builds free software solutions for nonprofits. The co-executive directors opened their pitch with a vivid scenario: a meal-delivery nonprofit scrambling when two volunteer drivers dropped out at the last minute, leaving 40 households without food. That real-world problem, faced by their partner Food for All DC, led Hack4Impact UMD to develop a client management system with automated delivery routing — increasing operational efficiency by roughly 30% and helping deliver over 600,000 pounds of food to the community.

Since 2020, the chapter has partnered with 33 nonprofits across healthcare, education and food insecurity, saving partners an estimated $38.64 million in software and labor costs and reaching over 1.2 million individuals.

The second-place prize of $5,000 in the Leaders track went to the American Diversity Group Free Clinic, represented by biological sciences majors Yash Porwal ’26 and Prem Saha. Founded in 2017 with a dental program and expanding to primary care in 2022, the clinic has held more than 600 free clinic events, served over 13,300 unique patients and provided more than $2.7 million in care—all with no ID or insurance required. Student volunteers have also helped raise more than $2.7 million to sustain and expand these services. UMD volunteers have contributed over 41,300 hours and helped distribute more than 624,000 pounds of food to patients facing food insecurity. In 2025, the clinic launched a Heart Health initiative, adding cardiology consultations and finding that more than 1 in 4 patients had undiagnosed hypertension.

The third-place prize of $2,500 in the Leaders track went to Remote Area Medical UMD, led by biological sciences major Malini Raghu ’26 and public health science major  Saili Khorjekar. Since 2022, UMD students have helped the national RAM organization deliver more than $8.1 million in free dental, vision and medical care, serving 67,000 patients across 33 clinics in the northeast with 780 multilingual volunteers. The UMD chapter, which now counts over 300 active members, announced plans to host its first-ever clinic at nearby Northwestern High School in August, with the goal of serving 2,500 patients over two days.

The Founders track judges included Do Good Challenge alums Sagar Doshi ’15, vice president of strategic partnerships for CollegeVine, and Kahlil Kettering M.P.M .’15, executive director of the Nature Conservancy Maryland/DC Chapter, and Francesca Zelachowski, group director and first vice president for private wealth management at Morgan Stanley. Leaders track judges included Michelle Gilliard, principal consultant of Michelle Gilliard & Associates; Veeraj Shah ’21, ’21, co-founder and CEO of Vitalize and Do Good Challenge alum; and Julie Shifman, co-founder and vice president of external relations for Last Mile Food Rescue in Cincinnati.

The evening also featured text-to-vote Audience Choice Awards. Two semifinalist teams delivered lightning pitches: DefenX, an AI-powered weapon detection system designed for schools, and Lean on Me UMD, the nation’s largest Lean on Me chapter, which operates a free, anonymous peer text line for UMD students. DefenX took home the $1,000 lightning audience choice award, while Lean on Me received $750 as runner-up.