13-Year-Old Honored in TIME’s First-Ever ‘Girl of the Year’ for Invention Helping Unhoused People

13-Year-Old Honored in TIME’s First-Ever ‘Girl of the Year’ for Invention Helping Unhoused People View this post on Instagram A post shared by Future Tech (@futuretech) For the first time, TIME Magazine has shone a spotlight on great girls making an impact in the world by debuting its Girls of the Year list. Created in partnership with LEGO, the list highlights 10 exceptional girls, from athletes to […] READ: 13-Year-Old Honored in TIME’s First-Ever ‘Girl of the Year’ for Invention Helping Unhoused People

Art Aug 31, 2025 0 0 Add to Reading List

13-Year-Old Honored in TIME’s First-Ever ‘Girl of the Year’ for Invention Helping Unhoused People

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A post shared by Future Tech (@futuretech)

For the first time, TIME Magazine has shone a spotlight on great girls making an impact in the world by debuting its Girls of the Year list. Created in partnership with LEGO, the list highlights 10 exceptional girls, from athletes to artists to innovators. And one such innovator is 13-year-old Rebecca Young. The Scottish teen was placed on the list for her incredible solar-heated blanket, which was created to help the unhoused when temperatures dip.

Remarkably, Young began her project when she was just 11 years old, after a school club asked its members to come up with an idea that would help people. As she would often see people experiencing homelessness in her hometown of Glasgow, she decided to focus on making their lives better with her project.

Her initial sketches show the basis for the blanket, which includes flexible solar panels. The end product, which folds into a backpack, ultimately got her a win at a UK-wide engineering competition with over 75,000 participants. Thaler, the engineering firm that sponsored the contest, helped Young refine the design and produce 35 blankets that were distributed to members of Glasgow’s population of unhoused people.

Now, with plans to manufacture 115 more blankets and the international spotlight, the sky is the limit for Young. She doesn’t intend to pursue engineering—she’s more into music—but hopes that her project will show other young women that they can transform their ideas into reality.

Other entrants in TIME’s Girls of the Year list are equally impressive. They include 17-year-old Defne Özcan, who broke records at age 16 when she became the youngest Turkish person to fly solo, and 12-year-old Naomi S. DeBerry, from New Orleans, who published her book, My Daddy Needs a Gift, in 2024. Based on her own experience of having a father in need of a kidney transplant, it helps children of all ages understand the concept of organ donation.

Discover more extraordinary young women on the TIME Girls of the Year list and scroll down to learn more about Rebecca Young’s story.