Little Miss FIX It! - RUBY'S LEARNING GAME-CHANGER

When she fell behind at school, the gifted student found a solution for all kids

- Kasia De Vydt-Jillings

At just 17 years old, Ruby Grace Miller is on a literacy mission to help Kiwi kids around the country with an award-winning game she created. But behind the Christchurch teen's success lies a journey of grit and fierce determination, born from her own experiences with learning difficulties.

“Sometimes I do forget how much I've achieved, but I really enjoy making change in the community and never see it as work or effort, just that I want to make positive changes,” enthuses Ruby Grace.

Last year, she won the SquareOne Dragon's Den competition, run by Jono and Ben from The Hits radio, with FIX, the educational card game she created. Since then, she's won awards at a regional and national level.

For Ruby Grace, it's proof that anything is possible if you focus on solutions instead of the problem, as her parents Amy-Beth and Gary always encouraged her to do.

“People have always said I'm a problem solver,” she says. “Sometimes you have to be able to find a solution to your own problem.”

At nine, she was diagnosed with dyslexia, a learning disability that primarily affects reading and writing; dysgraphia, a neurological condition that means she can't write coherently; and auditory processing disorder, where the ears can hear sounds normally but the brain struggles to process them.