Diya Balagopal’s senior year at Reedy High School in Frisco, Texas, started on August 13. As she navigated her first weeks of classes, she was still trying to narrow down a topic for her college essay, due with applications later this fall. She has so many extracurriculars and passions, it’s hard to choose what to highlight. Should she write about the environmental group she founded at her high school, Nature’s Nurturers? Her work as co-president at Project Green Schools’ National Youth Council? How she founded NativeScape Grass Company to transform conventional lawns with native seed blends that significantly reduce water and chemical usage, plus maintenance?
“I think my two main passions are environment and data—putting those two together,” mused Diya, 17. Whatever she writes about—and wherever she winds up for college—her current plan is to major in stats and data science and minor in environmental engineering. Read on to find out how a student gets so deeply involved in environmental causes so young—and how she manages to get her homework done with such a busy schedule.
Tell Administrator Zeldin: Cutting Climate Pollution Is Essential for Our Families’ Health
It starts with volunteerism
When Diya was in eighth grade, her parents decided service should be part of her 13th birthday celebration. “We went to the Blackland Prairie Raptor Center,” she recalls. The “super scenic” rehab and conservation center named after the tallgrass prairie that once covered more than 23,500 square miles of Texas immediately engaged her. There, she learned about how natural grasses are climate adapted and how their deep roots don’t require the amount of water most people use on lawns in the United States. She got to rehab a bald eagle and kept going back.
“A lot of my ideas came from there,” she says. When she learned that today only 1% of the Blackland Prairie remains, she wanted to know what she could do to help. “They talked about advocacy and awareness,” she remembers.
Nature’s Nurturers
Entering high school offered Diya a way to raise awareness through advocacy: with the support of a teacher-sponsor, she founded an environmental club called Nature’s Nurturers. She organizes volunteer events like cleanups, partners with local organizations and government (one collaboration with the city mayor is a campaign to protect birds from light pollution), and helps restore native plants by making and using seed balls. The club started with a few people and has grown to somewhere between 200 and 300 members nationwide, Diya estimates. It helps that friends who moved to Pennsylvania and California established their own Nature’s Nurturers chapters in their new schools.
Diya has seen how advocacy gives way to more advocacy—and this motivates her. “I started speaking at my school and some of my teachers were like, ‘This is great. My kids would benefit. What if you presented at elementary schools?’” There are 40 elementary schools in Frisco, which is near Dallas. Diya emailed schools, and a bunch invited her to come present. She also reached out to the superintendent of the district, who was happy to support her work, including engaging in her desire to add Blackland Prairie to the local curriculum.
Student response
Diya has been pleased with her fellow students’ overall interest and that there are enough active underclass people to take over after she graduates. “Sustainability is something you don’t need to be specifically interested in, but everyone should do a little to play their part. Some people will be like, ‘Oh, the environment doesn’t matter that much.’ But at the rate we are going now, if everyone could add in a little or just be knowledgeable, it would help,” she says.
Nature’s Nurturers offers a wide range of ways to get involved, depending on students’ individual interests. In addition to volunteering events, the club helped the school start composting cafeteria waste. They also collaborated with the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas. And they write articles for the school newspaper. “We tell people what they can do to support, and new facts they don’t know,” she says.
Beyond school
Diya’s environmental enthusiasm extends far beyond her school doors. This year she’s a copresident at Project Green Schools’ National Youth Council, an organization she found online when trying to get Nature’s Nurturers registered. “We were recognized by Texan by Nature, an organization founded by Laura Bush. They certify organizations or clubs doing a lot in the environmental space in Texas,” she says. When Diya noticed that other projects being recognized were from Project Green Schools, she wanted to connect with other youth leaders. She applied for their National Green Difference Award—and won in 2024. “I was really intrigued and wanted to join and be an officer. I applied and was chosen for a VP last year. I really love my time on the council,” she says. It involves monthly Zoom meetings, hosting panels, organizing workshops, working with legislators, and more. “I really love meeting new people and seeing new perspectives on issues I thought were one-sided,” she says.
Parent support
Despite nudging Diya toward volunteerism and service, her parents don’t share her interest in all things environmental. “My dad is in oil and gas. We are complete opposites,” Diya says, laughing. Still, her parents did allow her to experiment with native seeds on part of their family lawn before she launched a company to sell them. She will keep this business going when she gets to college. “I recently closed a deal with an entire residential community in Florida,” she says, noting she hasn’t had to have a summer job since launching the company. She also says she has a pilot project with the city of Frisco.
Making time for homework
It’s hard to imagine how a young person with this much extracurricular activity can get her homework done, but Diya insists she’s on top of it. “If you love something a lot, you will make time for it. It sounds like a lot, but I’m never doing all these things at once. It’s related and easy to combine some of these things,” she says, saying she can bring native grass business cards to presentations. She also saves time in other ways. “I don’t go out to parties and things like that,” she says. Instead, her “tight knit” group of friends do “quiet time” to help each other through homework. “We stay on a call and get our stuff done.”
Tell Administrator Zeldin: Cutting Climate Pollution Is Essential for Our Families’ Health