2026 Dragon Kim Fellowship applications now open for high schoolers in our nation's Western Region

Calling all motivated high school students living in Arizona, California, Nevada, and other Western Region states who want to make a positive difference in their communities next summer!

Orange County-based Dragon Kim Foundation, http://dragonkimfoundation.org, whose mission is to inspire our youth to impact their communities while discovering and pursuing their passions, has begun accepting applications for its 2026 Fellowship cohort, commemorating the 10th year of the program. The deadline to apply for the seven-month leadership program for high school students is January 9, 2026.

Prospective applicants are invited to sign up for an online or in-person inspiration session and/or to apply by visiting https://dragonkimfoundation.or...

Interested volunteers are encouraged to learn more at http://bit.ly/4qJw6Rk

In 2025, the Foundation supported a record-setting 63 Fellowship projects run by 138 high school students in three states. Together, all of the projects directly impacted 56,260 individuals and indirectly impacted nearly seven million. More than 700 volunteers gave nearly 40,000 hours of service time to contribute to the Fellows’ vision and cause.

The Foundation plans to award community service grants of up to $5,000 to support projects devised and implemented by motivated teens. High school student teams of two or three teens are encouraged to apply for the program. Applicants must be at least 13 years old and be U.S. citizens or legal residents of the state in which they are applying.

The Foundation will announce applicants selected for the Fellowship in the first quarter of 2026. These Fellows will participate in three weekends of intense leadershi6p and business training at no cost to them that elsewhere can costs thousands of dollars. They will also be paired up with mentors with experience in their project area.

At the end of the program, they will present their projects at Graduation. Projects named semi-finalists will then present to a panel of esteemed judges at the CEO Summit. Those selected as finalists will go on to present at the Dragon Challenge where they will compete for an additional $5,000 to continue their projects.

In 2025, projects ranged from ethics education, harvesting produce for food banks, shelters, and other organizations, and music instruction for visually impaired students, to teaching technology to senior citizens, baking birthday cakes for at-risk children, and holding theater workshops for under-served youth that enhanced their literacy, creativity, and confidence.

“As we launch our next class of Fellows, we are looking for inspired teens who want to make a measurable difference in their communities,” said Dragon Kim Foundation CEO and Co-founder Daniel Kim. “We want to help them break barriers to be changemakers in challenged neighborhoods, where many also live.”

He said that many Fellowship alumni have been accepted by top colleges, with the majority of Fellows graduating from or now attending one of the Top 25 colleges. Fellowship projects have been cited as one of the aspects of the students’ application that made them stand out.

“Teens who are spending their summers working in their communities to create positive change are the type of leaders that colleges are looking for, and indeed, who will comprise our next generation of leaders,” said Kim.

To learn more about sponsorships, contact Daniel Kim at development@dragonkimfoundation.org

The Fellowship was founded in honor of the late Dragon Kim, a talented young musician, athlete and scholar who wanted to help others. It has become a seedbed for the next generation of creative thinkers and entrepreneurs who want to create positive change.

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About the Dragon Kim Foundation

The Dragon Kim Foundation was established in 2015 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization by Grace and Daniel Kim to honor the memory of their late son Dragon Kim, who had been attending the Orange County School of the Arts. The mission of the Dragon Kim Foundation is to inspire our youth to impact their communities while discovering and pursuing their passions. Visit the website at http://dragonkimfoundation.org.