Kayla cares for kids
Kayla Cares for Kids
Obama scholarship takes Communication and Leadership senior to Sesame Street
Ameera, a bright green monster with a ponytail, is one of the newest Muppets to live on Sesame Street. The witty and curious eight-year-old uses a purple wheelchair and forearm crutches because of a spinal cord injury. She loves studying science just as much as cracking jokes and playing basketball.
Ameera made her debut on season five of "Ahlan Simsim" — the Arabic version of "Sesame Street" in the Middle East and North Africa — in 2021 and has been a part of a series of educational animated videos teaching kids about kindness and acceptance.
This summer, on a visit to New York City, Communication and Leadership senior Kayla Abramowitz helped bring Ameera to life and introduce her as a character globally.
It was part of her “summer voyage,” an opportunity she received after she won the inaugural Voyager Scholarship for Public Service last year. The scholarship was created by former President Barack Obama and Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, and is awarded each year to 100 rising juniors who are passionate about public service.
Awardees are provided up to $25,000 in scholarships for their junior and senior year and Airbnb credits for the summer voyage to gain experience in their field.
New Sesame Street character Ameera
New Sesame Street character Ameera
Abramowitz came across an ad for the Voyager Scholarship while scrolling through Instagram one day. She applied to it on a whim, two days before the deadline.
“I said, you know, I can apply to this. And if I don’t get it, whatever,” she said. “And if I do get it, that’d be the coolest thing that’s ever happened in my life.”
On the first day of her junior year, she got an email saying she won the scholarship. After calling her mom to make sure it was real and to celebrate, she started pouring through the scholarship’s website to meet the rest of her cohort. She said she read story after story of everything they’d accomplished already, and what they want to do with the future. “It really ignited the fire within me.”
"It’s a lot bigger than my little 11-year-old self could ever dream of."
Abramowitz said her time in New York City this summer enabled her to combine her pre-existing passion for disability advocacy work with her newfound interest in children’s media and entertainment to help introduce Ameera’s character to other countries. She got the chance to be on calls with the Ministry of Education in Bangladesh to discuss disability advocacy and awareness and helped review scripts that featured Ameera to make sure they represented people with disabilities well.
“I worked with people and logistics on showing how we can implement her as a character and create fairness and equality for her, which is so cool,” Abramowitz said. “I got to see her start from a concept and really come to life as a character.”
Abramowitz is no stranger to disability challenges. As a child, she was in and out of hospitals for weeks at a time, being treated for conditions like eosinophilic colitis, Crohn’s disease and juvenile arthritis. While going through countless rounds of testing and treatment, she found the only way to distract herself from the pain was to watch movies with her mom.
When she was 11, she was in the hospital for so long that she ran out of movies to watch and decided to bring some of her own DVDs back with her the next day. Abramowitz saw how happy the nurses were to receive her old “Thomas the Train” DVDs and wanted to see if she could bring more. She began working her way around her neighborhood, collecting used DVDs and bringing them to hospitals to share with other sick kids.
In 2013, Abramowitz founded Kayla Cares 4 Kids, which is now a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has donated nearly 50,000 entertainment and education items to 450 children’s medical facilities in all 50 states and three countries to date.
“It’s a lot bigger than my little 11-year-old self could ever dream of,” Abramowitz said. “It’s been a great and positive way to put my pain into something so impactful and powerful. Because I’m still dealing with the medical issues I was dealing with as an 11-year-old, but I’ve found this outlet as a way to cope with all that.”
"Connecting with the community here has been so incredible. It’s really great to see professors that are so passionate about their students and wanting them to succeed. I feel like Moody has really created a place where I belong, and that’s what I was looking for."
Abramowitz didn’t start her college career at Moody. She enrolled at the University of Miami in 2020 but never really felt connected with the community. Eventually, her father’s job moved from Florida to Texas, and she got the opportunity to transfer to The University of Texas at Austin. She decided to jump at the opportunity after researching all Moody had to offer.
“After really weighing the pros and cons of making such a huge transition, I realized that I’d be so much happier here at Texas,” Abramowitz said. “And it’s turned out to be so true. Connecting with the community here has been so incredible. It’s really great to see professors that are so passionate about their students and wanting them to succeed. I feel like Moody has really created a place where I belong, and that’s what I was looking for.”
Abramowitz said her recent experience working with Sesame Workshop made her realize how much she wanted to help shape a child’s future through humanitarian aid. She hopes to work toward this goal during the rest of her time at Moody.
“Being able to provide these little pockets of hope for them through these shows really was so powerful,” Abramowitz said. “And a lot of what Sesame Workshop does is education based off of research. So it’s creating quality content for these kids that they’ll hold with them for the rest of their lives and help them grow and shape into these really resilient people.”
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