Whiz Kids of the Week: Sonali Dutta and Neha Sharma

Cupertino Patch loves to celebrate the youth of the city for their accomplishments such as community service, academic and athletic achievements, innovative and entrepreneurial ideas, or creative talents.

Here are this week’s Whiz Kids.

Whiz Kids: Sonali Dutta and Neha Sharma

Why They’re Whizzy: They care about the environment and they are not just all talk and no action. One of the highlights of their work on behalf of Earth was to bring attention to the benefits of walking as opposed to being driven to school.

“We only have one planet,” says Neha. “We can’t go anywhere else.”

With an eye on the future, Sonali joked, “As of now.”

The girls are 8th-graders who graduated from Lawson Middle School this year and were part of the school’s eClub, the environmentally-focused school club.

They were instrumental in encouraging hundreds of their classmates to walk to school during the club’s WOW program in April. WOW stands for Walk One Week, but thanks to funding from a grant, the eClub was able to extend the promotional program to two weeks.

They held a poster-making party to get other students to help make posters that were placed around the school campus to encourage students to walk to school rather than be driven in a car.