“What started as a school project became a movement.”
Kriti Gupta was a 9th grader at Upper Saint Clair High School, Pittsburgh, when she began to notice how far hardship had spread during COVID-19 and how much students in nearby underfunded schools were struggling without the resources most kids take for granted.
While in 7th grade, she had participated in a project on homelessness in America. Her social studies teacher, Mr. Bowers, saw her passion and helped her transform it into something real. CCL-KIDS was born.
What started as one student's school project has grown into a multi-program nonprofit that has raised over $25,600, partnered with school districts, earned statewide recognition, and directly served students in and around the Pittsburgh area.
Kriti Gupta
Founder and Director, CCL-KIDS · Pittsburgh, PA
Kriti Gupta receiving funding support for CCL-KIDS
Student-Led.
Community-Rooted.
The COVID-19 pandemic widened an already significant gap between well-resourced and underfunded schools. While some students continued learning with laptops and stable home environments, many others fell further behind without reliable supplies, without mentors, and without anyone advocating for them.
Kriti Gupta saw this not as someone else's problem, but as a chance to act. Drawing on her own experience as a student, she launched CCL-KIDS as a K-12 initiative within CCL-US and immediately got to work: organizing backpack drives to remove the burden of school supply costs, launching after-school reading programs to restore academic momentum, and establishing leadership workshops so students could envision themselves as future leaders.
She also saw that dignity matters as much as supplies. CCL-KIDS organized hygiene and feminine care resource drives for teen girls at crisis resolution and homeless shelters, addressing needs that often go unspoken and underfunded.
The work has been recognized by the County of Allegheny, the Mayor of Pittsburgh, the Pennsylvania State Senate, and Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania. But the recognition that matters most is in the faces of students who showed up to school with a full backpack for the first time.
