About

Hello, I'm Reagan Raphael, and I started my Girl Scout Gold Award project as a senior in high school and have been working on it for nearly a year. The Gold Award is the highest achievement that any Girl Scout can receive through creating and leading a project that makes a difference. 

As someone who has been involved in making things since I was little, from artwork to becoming involved in making robots and Co-founding a design-oriented club that hosted design challenges as I grew older, I am happy that I chose a project that enables me to use the skills I have gathered throughout my life to engage with students with less experience and opportunities in the field. 

I chose to start with focusing on Wesley High school, an all-girls school on the island of Dominica my mom attended, and created NextGEN Design since I knew I wanted to do my part in increasing the representation of women and girls in design, a field heavily dominated by men. I not only developed this website featuring design process education, a widely applicable design lesson, CAD account setup, and resources ranging from beginner to advanced, templates, and content on 3D printing, but also led workshops for their school via Zoom, which prioritized design education where I did live CAD demonstrations, encouraged discussions, and used many examples of my own design experiences and creations to promote inspiration. 

Starting from students without CAD experience and limited design opportunities to gaining hands-on CAD experience and exploring the design process, my ultimate goal is to empower the generation that will design the future. The final part of my project is enabling students to bring their designs to life by introducing a 3D printer and its materials to Wesley High school. To accomplish this, I have set up an Amazon storefront which will ship items directly to Dominica via WeForward. If you are willing and able, please use this link to donate items and make a difference. Thank you!