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This photo shows one of my meetings with Mrs. Vines and taking notes on information regarding my community service project.
For my community service portion of my senior project, I worked with multiple people in the community. I discussed ideas with the Office on Youth director Alisha Vines, IT and technology teacher Laurie Jamerson, Nora Brooking, an Orange County Public School (OCPS) counselor, and a small bit with Gregory Hill, the director of technology for OCPS. After trial and error, I determined that I will be creating an info-graphic to provide resources for those in need.
The final goal I have for my capstone project is to educate and spread information about the importance of mental health awareness along with education regarding violence in schools. I also hope for my peers to become interested
SUMMARY AND IMPACT
For the best impact on my peers, I decided that the best way to spread awareness in the community as a high school student would be to make an info-graphic/poster that provides a link that to a page with websites, hotlines to call when in need, and even supportive quotes and/or phrases. As of now, I want to create three different posters to determine which one is more appealing to students, even though the QR code on the posters will all lead to the same web page with the links. I also plan to link my website in case the viewer was interested in looking into more detail about school violence and mental health.
PLAN FOR COMPLETION
My community service project will be finished by the end of December, 2022. I will be working on my project throughout the weeks of December 12th-18th, 19th-26th, and 27th-31st. I will mostly be completing my info graphics at home on a graphic design computer with a design program. After completion, I will send the finished product to the high school principal, Mr. Palmieri, to confirm that it is good to post around the school.
STRUGGLES
For my community service, I burned through a lot of different ideas before I finally figured out what would work best and what was possible for me to do as a student. First, I wanted to create a hotline to support students in need of mental health support and provide a place for those who think they may hurt others report how they are feeling. This was unfortunately not possible, as I could not hire people to keep track of the hotline and I did not know how to make one myself. This rejection was also felt for another one of my ideas- an app. Similarly to the hotline, I simply was unable to create an app myself, and could not guarantee that it would be used by the community.
I then stumbled upon the best idea I had yet: a simple questionnaire Google Form. This seemed to be the final idea that was going to be my impact for my community service, but later found out in late November that it was not going to be possible due to the amount of permissions needed by higher administration and all parent's of students in the high school. Although this was going to be an optional survey that focused on either violence in schools or mental health problems, every parent would have needed an email and letter sent home to allow me to make this. Although I had many issues in choosing an idea for my community service portion of my capstone project, I figured out the best idea that was possible for a high school student to conduct.
INITIAL CONTACT
The beginning of my community service project was tedious, since most of the work I was doing in August and September was sending emails and setting up in-person meetings. My first contact with Mrs. Vines and was in person, where I asked her if she would be interested in further discussing my senior capstone project. After the initial contact, I slowly dove into more hands on experiences, and the process of my community service was coming to life. In November, I determined what was best for my project, and it will be completed in December.
This is an email I sent to Mrs. Vines in August discussing one of the first ideas that I had come up with regarding my project, which I later changed to my current topic.
CHOOSING A TOPIC
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