By April Xu

After he got his driver’s permit in 2025, Ian Massaro remembers talking to his friend, expecting the conversation to be about the excitement of learning to drive.

Instead, his friend, an immigrant from El Salvador, said he couldn’t get a driver’s permit because of his immigration status.

Massaro went home and discovered the truth: His friend was eligible to get a driver’s license. Massaro shared the news with his friend, who was thrilled to learn of his eligibility and later obtained his driver’s license.

That experience underscored for Massaro the need for accessible legal information for immigrants, especially youth who are not familiar with the legal system in the U.S. It’s also what pushed him and his friends to create KidsKnowRights, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose digital resource and mobile application provides young people and immigrant families with legal information, educational guides and emergency-preparedness resources.

Massaro, now 17, is a senior at Avenues New York in Manhattan. He and his schoolmate John Stavropoulos developed the idea for KidsKnowRights in late 2024 when they were sophomores. Massaro said that his school has helped the organization connect with other groups and individuals. The platform launched in early 2025, initially focusing on young people, immigrants and families whose first language is not English.

Massaro said they saw a disconnect between legal information available online and what young people and immigrant families could understand and use. “We see it a lot with Latino and Chinese communities, where a lot of the best legal information is actually very poorly translated,” Massaro told Documented. “A lot of times, translations are literal. That’s not how we talk in conversation.”

To read the entire article: https://documentedny.com/2026/09/30/kidsknowrights-nyc-students-know-your-rights/

Photo credit: KidsKnowRights