The Extracurricular Problem Nobody Talks About

I'm Brighton. In grade 9, I was scrolling Instagram at midnight trying to find something, anything, that would make my university application look less empty.

I had gone through the usual routine. I asked my friends what they were doing. I searched “volunteer opportunities for high school students near me” and got a wall of outdated websites and government pages that hadn't been updated since 2019. I watched TikToks of students talking about their impressive extracurriculars, wondering where they even found these things. It felt like everyone else had a secret list I hadn't been given access to.

The thing is, I did eventually find some stuff. I found a local volunteer opportunity through a friend of a friend. I found an internship by cold emailing a startup. And then slowly, I started building my own things. I built Reviva Mart, selling surplus CPG snack mystery boxes, inspired by a similar food waste company. I also built INNOSpark, and hosted the biggest student-led pitch competition in the world. The idea came from noticing that nobody was actually supporting young builders in high school. But if I hadn't been inspired by other organizations, I wouldn't even have come up with the idea. When I was trying to build these passion projects, I didn't know how to start either of them. It was only after months of trial and error that I finally had something to show for myself.

It came from luck, persistence, and a lot of wasted time.

That bothered me. Not in a dramatic way, but in a nagging, persistent way.

The problem is not that opportunities do not exist. They absolutely do. There are student-led organizations, nonprofits, competitions, clubs, internships, and programs all over the place. The problem is that there is no single place where a student can go and actually browse what is available to them, get inspired by actual student-led projects. You either already know about something through your network, or you do not find it at all.

Students with access to well-connected schools, informed parents, or older siblings who have gone through the process already have a massive advantage. Everyone else is searching blind. And most high schoolers do not even know what they are missing because they have never seen a full picture of what is out there.

So I'm building EC Database. I started collecting data on student-led organizations, clubs, nonprofits, competitions, and programs. I built a platform around them. The kind of thing I wish had existed when I was trying to figure out what to do with my time outside of school.

EC Database is a platform where high school students can discover extracurricular opportunities tailored to their interests and location. Right now, it features over 200 student-led organizations and 300 local opportunities across a range of categories. Whether you are into entrepreneurship, science, community service, arts, sports, or something in between, the goal is to surface options that are actually relevant to you without requiring you to know the right people or spend hours digging through Google.

Every student deserves to know what opportunities exist for them without having to rely on luck or connections to find out. Whether you are a Grade 9 student who has no idea where to start, or a Grade 12 student looking to go deeper in something you are already passionate about, EC Database is meant to reduce the friction between you and the thing that could change how you spend your high school years.

No one should miss out on something great just because they did not know it existed.