On April 22, 2016, Mr. William Ferguson, Principal of St. Elizabeth Catholic Academy in Ozone Park accompanied the students in the Middy Fund with their teachers and mentors to Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Middy Fund is a not-for-profit organization that teaches middle school students to use design thinking and entrepreneurial skills to find innovative solutions to problems they face as individuals and as a community. With mentoring from high school project managers and college consultants, the students learn to design, develop, pitch and fundraise for their own projects.
After months of preparation, the students in Middy Fund were ready to present the results of their hard work and dedication to entrepreneurs at Harvard University. The twenty-six middle school students made up 4 distinct groups.

Stress Press is a peer-to-peer advice exchange for coping with common causes of stress. It is a web forum designed for high school and middle school students that allows its users to get online support to help overcome common obstacles. The Purifiers show middle school students what they can do about pollution by promoting the reuse of plastic bottles for fn projects such as building a greenhouse, making jewelry boxes, piggy banks, etc, with tutorials. At My Business Bank aims to tackle the issue of financial literacy. Middies decided to create a game to help teach kids how to become financially literate. Voices Heard is an online platform that aims to bridge the gap between students and the world’s social issues.

Middy Fund is a place where passion gets ignited and students are driven to want to make social change. Middy Fund is a program that helps young people to reach their highest capabilities by giving them an outlet to help the community in a hands- on way. The students at St. Elizabeth Catholic Academy joined Middy Fund because they wanted the opportunity to change the world, or at least to do something to help make a difference.