When 16-year-old Anika Krishnan isn’t playing the violin with her band or board games with her family, she’s helping teens find volunteer opportunities through her nonprofit Treefish.
Krishnan figured that many nonprofits were struggling after the pandemic hit, so she started volunteering through remote opportunities.
“During the pandemic, I felt really isolated, because I didn’t really have any interaction with my classmates,” Krishnan said. “Volunteering helped me feel like I was doing something to help my community.”
Krishnan wanted to share this experience with classmates and find ways to impact her community at a larger level. So she created a prototype of a mobile app encouraging youth to volunteer. Her app was selected as a national finalist in a competition by ProjectCSGIRLS in 2020.
Treefish continues to help teens find remote volunteer opportunities and recently added paid internships. Krishnan finds organizations online and features partners on her website and blog. The app currently lists more than 150 organizations and has around 500 volunteers using the platform.
Krishnan, who last year received a Bellevue Youth Leadership award for “Outstanding Creative & Innovative Thinker,” uses social media and virtual announcements at her school to promote Treefish. But she said getting the word out more broadly has been a challenge.
Going forward, Krishnan hopes to partner with more organizations and create a newsletter that send users updates about new opportunities posted on the site.
