Afeef Sheikh is thinking about the impoverished, the illiterate — the children in Puget Sound and abroad.

And he’s taking action.

“My goal is to help,” he said. “Everybody should have the opportunity to learn.”

In March, the 17-year-old Sammamish resident earned the SAMMI Youth Spirit Award for his work in educating children locally and internationally.

He brought desks to students in Africa and notebooks to students in India as part of his initiative, “The Literacy Crusade.”

He donated books to the Seattle Children’s Hospital and to the Congregation for Kids in Bellevue, among others. And he has volunteered to read at several local schools.

“People think they have to go big, but you really don’t,” he said.

In Sammamish, he chaired the city’s Youth Board and helped organize a teen food drive.

More recently, he’s partnered with Hope Festival organizers in their “Hope in Motion” spin-off, donating books to low-income families.

These community outreach projects are only the start of Sheikh’s efforts.

As he’s developed his engineering and mathematical skills in school, he’s sought projects to continue giving back.

As a junior at Tesla STEM High School just outside Sammamish city limits, he’s made strides toward solving real-world problems, including creating a viable solution and treatment for phantom limb syndrome.

There are millions of amputees in the world, and the current mirror therapy only works for about 60 percent of people, he said — which is not good enough in Sheikh’s book.

He’s always had a mind for technology, but it wasn’t until recently that he decided his passion is for business: “If you’re going to develop a solution, it has to work for everyone,” he said.

Plus, there’s the added encumbrance of needing to travel to and pay for the physical therapy appointments.

His business model plays off technologies already available, like an individual’s cell phone.

First, he focuses on the therapy.

Sheikh combines the use of mobile applications, 3D scans and Google Cardboard to provide people with an on-the-go therapy method.

“Now you can do rehab anywhere you are,” he said.

Then, he took it to the next level in another business venture to create low-cost prosthetics using 3D printers.

Since his plans incorporate modern technology, his solutions to help amputees only gets better as new technologies emerge, he said.

He’s presented his business model in several competitions, such as at the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, which the U.S. Department of Defense sponsored. The Department has apparently expressed interest in his application and business model, he said.

Due to his age, however, Sheikh is not permitted to conduct human testing, which is why a Johns Hopkins University professor is moving forward with the research to see if his solution is viable.

“I’m just glad to be helping people,” he said.

To find out more about “The Literacy Crusade,” visit www.facebook.com/TheLiteracyCrusade/.

To find out more about Sheikh’s alternative solution to phantom limb syndrome, visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKwU4KxNgsA.

To view a list of his achomplishments, visit http://www.teslastemptsa.org/accolades-for-t-stem-student-afeef-sheikh/.