A high school junior out of Raleigh is empowering North Carolina students as the founder of a nonprofit organization, soon to have possible impacts for Onslow. 

Isaac Lund began Service Beakers in 2019, a nonprofit that gives free science lessons to students around North Carolina. Lund started the nonprofit after being inspired by watching his dad struggle with ALS for the last seven years. 

He said that was mentally draining for him, especially in middle school, and it took him until his freshman year of high school to start finding himself again. 

"Overcoming that really made me inspired to help other kids who had any similar issues," said Lund. "Especially with the pandemic, a lot of kids lost their enthusiasm for their education and things like that, and it really just became a whole issue. So, I saw that as an opportunity to start this non-profit that's focused on not only getting them excited about learning again, excited about education, but also focused on getting them empowered."

He also wanted to convince them that even though they're young, even though they might be going through issues, they can overcome any obstacle and go on and do great things.

Service Beakers has presented at eight schools and museums in the triangle area so far, and have partnered with 15-20. Now, Lund said they're planning to expand, specifically to Onslow County. 

Lund said they hope to partner with both the Onslow County Museum and the Marine Museum of the Carolinas to provide free lessons. How these lessons will go depends on each museum, but Lund said they've done, and are open to, in-person, virtual, or hybrid lessons. 

"We're coming to Onslow County," said Lund, "and if there's any people out there who want their kids to be involved in any of our lessons or anything like that, they can reach out to us and let us know, and we can perhaps partner with their school or local museum. We are going to be doing everything we can to partner with museums and other youth organizations in Onslow County."

For those who don't want to wait, Service Beakers will soon be starting back up their virtual lessons, which are open to the public. Lund said he encourages anyone interested to join the lessons, which should start within the next two weeks or so. 

Lessons range on everything from coral reefs to respiratory, air pollution, waves, ecosystems, forces in motion, and more. 

"One of our lessons is about coral reefs and ocean acidification," said Lund, also saying Onslow would be a great location for beach-related topics. "One thing we like to do, like I said, our whole program is about empowering students, so we try to encourage students to take what they learn in the lesson and apply it to innovative community service initiatives they can start."

Lund said an example of this they've used before is asking students to clean up the beach next time they went, to follow up on lessons regarding coral reefs. 

On top of providing free science lessons, Service Beakers also partnered with St. Michaels Church out of Raleigh, which has an annual mission to Honduras to provide educational support to students. 

"We noticed that there wasn't really a big focus on providing technology to the students, and that was something that we saw, and we decided to take what success we had here in N.C. and transfer it," said Lund. 

Service Beakers spent the past four months reaching out to people asking for support, and now they've managed to raise over 350 devices, $80,000 worth, to send to Honduras. These include laptops, monitor, and PCs. 

Since starting, Service Beakers has taught over 3,600 students. 

"It's been a really fun journey, fun experience working with all of them," said Lund. 

For those interested, visit servicebeakers.com for more information. 

"It's not specifically catered to one socioeconomic group," said Lund. "Although, that kind of ties well into our mission of empowering students. So, for the most part, especially from schools of underrepresented backgrounds, we always try to look for those in particular to present our lessons. But we are open, we've presented to private schools, we've presented to all those across the spectrum."

Reporter Morgan Starling can be reached at mstarling@gannett.com