Virginia teen who dreams of fighting skin cancer with soap has been named Time Magazine’s Kid of the Year

As kids across the country head back to high school this month, Time Magazine has announced its Child of the Year 2024, Heman Bekele.

A black 15-year-old from Fairfax County, Virginia, doesn’t just dream of fighting skin cancer with body soap; his dream is already becoming a reality.

Bekele was chosen as this yr’s Kid of the Year because of the “ambition” and “selflessness” he demonstrated by working hard in his spare time — specifically, during summer vacations — at the Johns Hopkins laboratory in Baltimore where he created his unique soap.

The Woodson High School Tenth-grader first made headlines and appeared on talk shows after his soap won the annual Young Scientist Challenge hosted by 3M and Discovery Education in October 2023.

“I’m really passionate about skin cancer research,” Bekele says, “whether it’s my own research or what’s happening in the field. It’s absolutely amazing that one day my bar of soap could have a direct impact on someone’s life. That’s why I started this whole thing.”

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Bekele was originally born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and emigrated to the U.S. with his family at age 4. He currently lives in Northern Virginia with his mother, a teacher, his father, a human resources specialist, and his sisters — Hasset, 16, and Liya, 7. He told Time magazine that his parents instilled the importance of sunscreen in him and his sisters early on, though he admitted that he “didn’t pay much attention to it” when he was younger.

After learning about imiquimod, a drug approved to fight a sort of skin cancer that has the potential to fight other types of the disease, the teen wondered if there was a approach to make it more accessible. Realizing that just about everyone uses soap and water to clean, he got here across the progressive bar of soap.

“Anyone could do what I did,” Bekele says. “I just had an idea. I worked on it and I made it happen.”

His concept remains to be in its early stages and “has a long way to go.” But his soap and its potentially life-saving properties are an encouraging development in the world of personal care. Ironically, the industry has been suffering from products which have been increasing the risk of various cancers in lots of Black and brown people for generations.

Although skin cancer stays extremely rare in black and brown people, especially black men, have the lowest survival rate after illness. Black persons are more more likely to be diagnosed in the later stages. With cancer deaths, including skin cancer, set to extend by almost 100% by 2050, Bekele soap could have a big impact.

Time magazine’s 2024 “Kid of the Year” award includes one other noteworthy child from the communications department: actor Keivonn WoodwardAt just 10 years old, the Bowie, Maryland, native made history last yr as the first black (and only second-ever) deaf actor nominated for an Emmy for his critically acclaimed role in HBO’s “The Last of Us.”