A Mississippi teen unpacks how the Jackson water crisis impacts education
17-year-old Georgianna McKenny is the high school grand prize winner in NPR's fifth annual Student Podcast Challenge.
Georgianna McKenny's award-winning podcast begins, fittingly, with a blaring alarm.
It's an alarm clock, waking her 17-year-old cousin, Mariah, as she navigates a morning, back in January, when living in Jackson, Miss., meant waking up without access to clean water.
No showers, no drinkable water out of the tap, and, for a few days, no school.
McKenny is the newly-announced high-school winner of NPR's fifth-annual . In a year with more than 3,300 entries – from middle- and high-schoolers in 48 states as well as Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico – McKenny and her winning entry tell the story of the toll Jackson's water crisis has taken.
