002. AIYA 2025–26 Season Reflection & Acknowledgments

As we close the inaugural 2025–26 AIYA Season, we look back with immense gratitude for what our community has built together and genuine pride in how far the AIYA Network has come. Throughout AIYA Literacy Week, the AIYA Global AI Hackathon, and the AIYA Impact Symposium, students across three continents showed that they are ready to engage with AI critically, responsibly, creatively, and effectively.

None of this would have been possible without the collective commitment of our students, faculty, and sponsors. You transformed an ambitious vision into a thriving reality, and we are honored to recognize the core partners who brought this movement to life:

1. Founding Partner Schools

First, you to the forward-thinking institutions that put their trust in our student leaders and empowered AIYA to launch globally:

• Al-Bayan Bilingual School (Kuwait)

• Archer School for Girls (USA)

• Brentwood School (USA)

• Flintridge Preparatory School (USA)

• North London Collegiate School Jeju (South Korea)

• Pomfret School (USA)

• Saint Stephen's College (Australia)

2. Executive Team, AIYA Ambassadors, & Student Chapter Founders

You are the heart and soul of this movement. You served as the vital bridge to local faculty and turned an overarching concept into a vibrant, locally grounded reality. Deploying our tentpole events meant navigating varsity athletics, performing arts, heavy academic loads, and college applications while introducing AI as an entirely new domain for student investment. By solving challenges in real time, you proved high schoolers are ready to lead. This success belongs to you!

3. Faculty Mentors, Advisors, & Administrators

We extend our sincere appreciation to the educators who championed our efforts behind the scenes. By lending your expertise, providing oversight, and clearing administrative pathways through complex school terms, you gave our Ambassadors and participants the safety net needed to take bold intellectual risks. Your partnership transformed AIYA from an ambitious concept into a thriving reality.

4. Incubation Partners

A special debt of gratitude to the steady institutional leaders who supported AIYA during its incubation. We offer our deepest thanks to Brentwood School (including the Belldegrun Center for Innovative Leadership) and North London Collegiate School (NLCS Jeju) for sponsoring our efforts from day one. From our earliest prompt engineering deep dives in 2024 through our official founding in 2025, thank you for trusting us to build and run AIYA from the ground up.

5. The Hey AI! Foundation

A profound thanks to the Hey AI! Foundation for championing our mission from day one. Thank you for taking a leap of faith to partner with us in developing and distributing cutting-edge AI programming. By providing essential resources, institutional support, and latitude, your partnership empowered our network to deliver real outcomes across three continents.

Connect & Get Involved

Stay connected with AIYA across all of our official channels!

• Website: aiyouthalliance.org

• LinkedIn: ai-youth-alliance-aiya

• Instagram: ai.youth.alliance

• YouTube: @AI_Youth_Alliance

• X (Twitter): AIYA_on_X

• Developer & Research: GitHub | Hugging Face | Kaggle