Cinthya Perez Cornejo
Peru, 18
She/Her
Project: FormaTec
Peru is one of the countries most vulnerable to earthquakes and natural disasters. Cinthya saw this firsthand when the 2017 El Niño floods damaged many homes in the surrounding community. As disasters continued to affect communities nationwide, she recognized that much of the damage was preventable if the technical knowledge reached the people who needed it. Cinthya founded FormaTec to put that knowledge in the hands of the next generation. Its hands-on workshops train young Peruvians in seismic-resistant design, sustainable construction, and urban risk awareness, treating technical education as a form of climate prevention rather than repair. In its first year, FormaTec students produced 22 climate-resilient housing prototypes. Cinthya is now developing a bilingual, open-source digital toolkit so students and educators can run FormaTec workshops on their own, scaling youth-led climate adaptation and disaster-resilience education across the country.