Deadline: June 24, 2025
Applications are open for the curaJOY Summer Impact Fellowship 2025. The curaJOY Summer Impact Fellowship empowers youth to build real-world AI and social good projects that improve digital safety and wellness while gaining career-ready skills and publication opportunities.
Since 2022, curaJOY’s year-round Youth Ambassadors and Joymakers have completed more than 40 software and community projects. Seventy percent of alumni who applied to internships were hired by companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, EA and the UN. The Summer Impact Fellowship distills those best practices into a competitive, 7-week paid program—making this Founding Cohort both new and built on a proven talent pipeline, intended for high-caliber youth who are committed to showcasing their technical and leadership capacity.
Program Cohorts
Tech Cohort
- AI Safety Dashboard (React + Node + AWS): Fellows audit and retrain our detector for cyber-bullying, negative self-talk, and self-harm.
- AI Coach: Respond to online harm with a breathing prompt, positive reframe, or resource link seconds after low-risk harm is flagged.
- Outcome: open-source code + live demo
Research Cohort
- Tapestry of Emotions Dataset: 15 000 multi-platform posts labeled for bullying/self-harm + emotion; dual-pass QA.
- Impact Mini-Campaign: 8 IG posts, 150 teen surveys, 1-page infographic of results.
- Outcome: The first open dataset created by and on Gen Z to study cyber-bullying, self-harm, and negative self-talk across TikTok, Discord, and Instagram + impact snapshot
Cost
- The program is completely free. They do not charge any tuition or fees, and all selected fellows receive a stipend of $1,250.
Eligibility
- They welcome applications from rising high school juniors and seniors, as well as current college students, who are curious, motivated, and want to use technology and community engagement to improve youth mental wellness.
- Tech Cohort applicants should have prior programming experience. Impact Cohort applicants should have strong writing, social media, or outreach skills.
Application
Applications are accepted on a rolling basis for one of 12 seats in this selective program. The final deadline is June 24, 2025.
For more information, visit curaJOY Summer Impact Fellowship.
