Full Project List

Cici Cai

Statement of Impact: Through creating four informative posters and proposing a 3-days, students’ preference-based menu to the CIS canteen, I reduced more than 5% of food waste in the CIS canteen by April 22.

Further Description:

My goal is to reduce 5% of food waste in mass in the CIS canteen by April 22, by creating at least 3 informative posters and proposing a 3-days, student preference-based menu to the canteen. After conducting an online survey about teachers’ and students’ preferences for canteen food, I devised a new canteen menu based on the results of the survey. I had two meetings with the canteen manager to adjust the menu. The menu not only contains some popular dishes like 叉烧饭 and crispy chicken, but also new features like a taco bar and ice-cream bar. What’s more, I designed small posters that reminded people of cleaning their plates for the canteen, and they were put on the canteen tables as well as on the walls. The feedback from students and teachers regarding the new three-days menu was very positive, as everyone loved the food. To make the impact continuous, I had a following-up meeting with the canteen manager and provided a list of students’ favorite dishes. I also suggested they replace some dishes with a taco bar or a sandwich bar in the future. According to the statistics sent by the canteen, I have reduced the average mass of food waste per meal from 143.46g to 130.08 g, which is about a 9.3% decrease. Overall, I believed that my project was quite successful and I was really proud of my achievements.

Caelyn Chang

Statement of Impact: The project that I decided to focus on during this unit was reworking the current new buddy system to also address the student perspective. Because Hangzhou is a smaller cohort, I decided to try my system with HZ10, and see whether the students' needs are addressed better.

Further Description:

My goals for this project was to design a system that addresses both student needs as well as making sure that the logistics work. The final system that I came up with includes having students in groups of 3-5, and the groups will be formed based on personal interests which I can find through a google form. One of the challenges I faced was trying to figure out how to carry this into next year, and after advice from Mr. Wro and Mr. Pollock, I decided to ask a student from year 9 to take over this project when they get to Hangzhou. The most surprising part of this process was how invested I became into finding a system that would work, as well as how surprising people’s experiences with the current buddy system is, as from the information they have told me, the current buddy system was essentially useless due to the lack of connection. Because of the time constraints, I haven’t fully met my goal yet. However, I have gotten permission from Mr. Cruickshank and 張校長 to try my system on next year’s cohort, and I am waiting on Ms. Gillespie’s reply on a student recommendation as well as the student’s reply. Because of the time restrictions, I am not sure whether I can finish.

Gordon Chen

Statement of Impact: I started a cycle to compost the food waste we produce and use it to grow more fruits and vegetables for our canteen.

Further Description:

My project is in 3 parts, composting, gardening, and passing it down. The first part is composting. For composting, I experimented with collecting the fruit waste that we produce in our dorms. I hosted a competition for dorms to collect as much of the fruit peels and cores from their dorm as possible in one week. I thought this would be a fun and competitive way to get people to help with the problem of food waste. Then I used the waste collected and composted them in our aerobic compost bin outside the teahouse. The second part of my project is gardening. Gardening was something that we started when we couldn’t go to our links locations. We actually made a lot of progress after cleaning out our small plot near the field and even planning what to farm and where. However, our schedule suddenly changed and instead of having the extra hours in the day to do links related projects, we had classes and choir. So then we started gardening less and didn’t have enough time to complete our plans. The final piece of my project is passing it on. Due to this being an e2i project, and we only have about 2-4 weeks for our action phase, there really wasn’t enough time to implement any significant change. Therefore my plan is to pass this onto future HZ years but this time not as an e2i project, but rather something the sustainability committee could get into or just anyone interested.

Jennifer Chen

Statement of Impact: I designed and created small thin notebooks that fit in uniform pockets for notes on homework, daily plans, sudden ideas and inspiration, etc. that people can carry around in school.

Further Description:

I feel like I met part of my goals. My goal was to create a simple and easily-accessible tool that everyone could record and document misc things on. Originally I envisioned my planners to have a somewhat strong cover page and a string attached to the top that allows it to be hung on bags and fingers and such, but I ended up simply printing and using A4 paper without any other specific design elements. It was quite fun working on the design – I tried to go for green as it’s the most “soothing” color and didn’t really convey strong feelings so sudden streaks of emotional inspiration the user may want to jot down won’t be lost. A surprise is how thin the planners turned out to be. I knew a single piece of A4 paper was thin, but I didn’t expect 7 pieces of them stacked together to be so skinny, somehow. Though that is a welcome surprise, as it means the notebooks are easier to carry around and I can even expand the page number by three or four. I cut and bound the notebooks together by myself in my dormitory common room. Thus I did not complete my goals fully – after creating the notebooks, I ended up simply passing them to everyone on my floor because of their interest in what I was doing. After everyone received a copy I ran out of paper and time, so I just decided to tell everyone to fill in my form and called it a day.

Christopher Cheng

Statement of Impact: Creating a poster to promote the importance of using technology and how it can affect high school student’s daily life in a positive way by creating a poster ( and also having a later tech time during beyond )

Further Description:

I started off using around half an hour making the posters in Canva for my first step. I used this to promote the importance of using technology and how it affects high school students' daily life. I can finish the plan by the end of the year and the poster by the end of the next week and I will give a couple week's time for people to see the poster and hopefully it can help them out in the importance of technology.
Extension of Project:
I think that one way to help us experience the certain changes that technology brings to us is by putting a test up for having some changes for tech time during the Beyond week. I would propose during Beyond, For Sunday nights to Friday nights, a later tech time of 10 pm. And for Saturday Night with no tech time due to the following day is just a casual relaxation day with nothing scheduled to do. My main reason for this is because beyond is a very fun experience for this where we can develop our passion. I think because of a long time of using technology it can expand our experience, for example after a long day of working on our passion some students may want to use the time to document their day and the progress or even write diaries about. As a high school student I do not normally do journaling or diaries. However, this is a beyond project where I get to do my passion of work and for the entire two weeks I can be focused on this, I would love to record my wonderful experience. Another main reason is because I think that this fun experience deserves a worthy time of sharing. Family members are key. A lot of the students have their first experience on coming across the beyond program. Having such a unique experience of being able to spend two weeks of the academic year dedicated to your passion can create a lot of sets of emotions for students. A lot of their parents will be interested in what their students are doing beyond and how their progress is, and the students would also really want to share their passionable experience in the day trips or their projects to the family. Students will be using a lot of their time on their beyond project and not much time to connect with families or have self directed time. By having extra tech time, students will have more time to do so.

Jeanine Cheng

Statement of Impact: I created 5 different flyers about the reality of adoption. By doing this, I hoped to be able to interest and educate people about adoption while discouraging them from randomly or carelessly adopting/purchasing dogs.

Further Description:

Unfortunately, I didn’t meet the important parts of my goal, because I lot of my goals for impact were based on being able to create an official Wechat account, in terms of being able to reach my target audience. There were a variety of technical problems with creating one, one of which was that I The main part of my goal that I achieved was making the posters (an example of which is presented in my photo). My initial thought process while I was creating my action plan was that there are too many people who simply buy pets as gifts, since there are many pet stores that also provide discounts and sales during holidays such as Christmas. This greatly increases the likelihood of this animal getting returned to the shelter, which can have a negative impact on it, or even more commonly being abandoned. Since changing the ways of those that are higher up in this process (e.g. convincing pet stores to change their policies, or even governments to change laws regarding this) is very difficult, I wanted to reach the main actors- those that are purchasing the pets. I wanted to make them more aware and informed about the realities of owning a pet, so they can be more responsible and prepared owners.

pictured: a screenshot of our weibo page feed

Natalie Cheng

Statement of Impact: We created a well-informed, established weibo page for Shati Pet Center to allow citizens of Hangzhou to better understand the dogs in hopes for them to get adopted or receive funding. In addition, we volunteered at the animal shelter to gain and share our first-hand experience.

Further Description:

I believe we have reached the goals of our project to quite a large extent. Our main intent was to enhance the popularity of Shati Pet Center amongst the citizens of Hangzhou and build a sustainable connection between them and Hangzhou CIS. By editing two videos (i.e. interviews and a dog montage) we were able to capture the personality of each dog and first-hand accounts which allows viewers to know more about the shelter. From seeing that we have gained an addition of 33 followers in 8 days, along with 58 views and 6 likes within 10 minutes of posting, it indicates that people are becoming more aware of our account, meaning the shelter. This suggests a higher likelihood of receiving funding and volunteers. We also collaborated with William and to post an infographic about animal cruelty in order educate the public about this serious matter. Because of the limited time we spent at the animal shelter due to covid, we were not able to complete the hands-on work that we planned to accomplish. Everything we have done for the shelter was in hopes to get a dog adopted, and since we have already taught the staff at the animal shelter to oversee the weibo account, we are confident that a dog will eventually get adopted through our weibo page.
link to our weibo page: https://weibo.com/u/6163234066

Melanie Cheung

Statement of Impact: We raised awareness and educated HZCIS students about gender equality by hosting 3 book club sessions (6th, 13th, 20th April) on gender equality-related stories and articles followed by small discussions where we asked for their opinions and questions to make sure they paid attention. Before and after surveys were also sent out to see if our sessions made an impact and to receive feedback on improving our book club to make it more effective and impactful.

Further Description:

The book club went better than we expected, with students eager to participate and asking us to continue hosting them. Our initial goal was to host 2 book clubs and have at least 3 male students and 3 female students, but as our project progressed, we decided to have an extra book club due to the high participation rate- we exceeded our goal of having 6 students by a lot. People were excited about joining our book club, from us asking people to join to people asking us when the next session was, which made us really happy as we saw how people started becoming more enthusiastic about gender equality-related issues. Our discussions always went on longer than expected, with our participants sharing their opinions on the articles we were reading, being able to continue discussing even without us having to lead them. We’re really proud of how our book club went, and if we were to do it again, we would make sure to prepare more articles for our participants to encourage more meaningful discussions! Hosting this book club was a really valuable experience, we were able to educate people on different issues and also learn about a topic from multiple perspectives, which we found meaningful because we as the hosts were able to benefit from the many viewpoints too.

Natalie Cheung

Statement of Impact: Created a well-researched proposal for the CIS administrative team with concise requests (formed from interviews with HZ9 students), highlightd the mental health needs of HZ9 students (tackling stress factors stemmed from academic, social and other reasons); Send the proposal to the CIS administrative team late April and hosted a meeting with the school administrative team (Ms Zhang, Mr Cruickshank etc.) by the end of the year (during Beyond).

Further Description:

My goal of the project was to gain more insight into the mental health needs of student members of our one-year boarding school community and find ways to benefit and support them in our environment; amplify their voices and. With my report, I was able to analyze the student responses and convey their perspectives with detailed responses. Encapsulating the student voice and their perspectives, I have hopefully shown the school leadership team what students feel that the school has already been able to provide for them, and aspects that they could implement to further support student mental health needs. In this project, I was able to ultimately meet most of the goals that I set for myself (except the meeting with the school leadership team, which will happen during Beyond). However, I had missed most of my deadlines, which was due to my time management during assessment weeks. I was able to use this project to submit to the Global Social Leaders 2022 Competition, creating a team called Speak Our Minds. The competition is similar to what we were doing in E2I, except I had to create a video submission that explained how I took course of action to achieve my project and a final progress report that summarized the efforts that I made to complete this project and the sustainability of the project. With this project, I have discovered that humans may seem like completely different individuals, yet, everyone still needs someone to be able to support them. Some students are hesitant to express their emotions due to their fear of judgment or they are unused to other people valuing their needs, which is why they choose to repress them. What is most important, is for us to empathize with others and respect their mental health needs (giving someone space when they need it, giving them a hug when they need it). Much can be done in just small gestures of respecting boundaries and acknowledging that someone needs support.

Katie Chiu

Statement of Impact: I created a piece of art that visually presented to people the effects of academic pressure that can lead to negative mental health, highlighting the negative “everything depends on my grades” centered mindset in school that students face. The art can be sent to an organization which advocates for mental health in China, and possibly be used to educate people, or made into merchandise to help raise funds for mental health expenses.

Further Description:

My goal of the project was to gain more insight into the mental health needs of student members of our one-yearThe goal of my E2I project was to support youth who struggle with mental health due to societal pressures related to academics and careers through spreading awareness and/or raising fun. Because of time restraints, I wasn’t able to make my art into pieces of merchandise and sent it to a mental health organization in Hangzhou to raise funds for youth mental health support services such as therapy and medication fees for families that cannot afford it. However, I completed 5 pieces of art in time, and put it together as a collection for people to look at. I printed it out as a small booklet and left it on the front desk of the library so that students and teachers who pass by can feel free to take a look if they’d like. I hope to allow both students and teachers to be able to look into a perspective that they’re not familiar with or be able to relate to the art and feel a connection to it by expressing my thoughts and experiences on mental health related to academic pressures through visual arts. This allows people to become aware and mindful of the challenges that people who struggle with mental health face, fulfilling one of the main goals of my E2I project. Next time, I would add resources to the booklet in the library about mental health in schools so that people who are curious know where to look if they wish to learn more about this issue.

Dominic Falso

Statement of Impact: I promoted awareness to the HZCIS students about unemployment in Hong Kong by creating art works and post them around the hotspots of the school.

Further Description:

Throughout the entire E2i unit, I have strived to do research and do as much as I possibly can regarding my target. I feel that I have achieved the goals I set for myself this unit and I successfully promoted awareness to the people of HZCIS. I followed the steps I wrote for myself in my action plan and executed them accordingly. I wanted to create a poster which portrays the problem, statistics, and an individual story, and I feel that my poster production has exceeded my own expectations. A key aspect of my action phase was identifying the areas where I should place the posters, due to the fact that if my posters were placed in an uncommon spot, they would be deemed useless. A strategy I used to overcome this was identifying places in the school that I am commonly at and placing a poster there. I then took a photo of it for evidence and placed them in this folder.

Vivian Fan

Statement of Impact: Through the sale of baked goods to HZCIS students and staff, we raised 3650RMB that was donated to the HER Fund in Hong Kong. These funds were used to support grassroots organisations who protect and support women who experience violence, economic injustices, discrimination, strengthening voices, and civil participation for all.

Further Description:

Our goal at the beginning of E2I was to raise at least 500RMB through the sale of baked goods, to be donated to HER Fund. The funds were used for grant-making and capacity building in Hong Kong, HER Fund’s grantee partners being grassroots organisations working directly in their communities to fight gender inequality. We raised $3650, which exceeded our expectations in this project, even though we only hosted 1 bake sale and 1 pre-order, as compared to our original goal of 4. Throughout our project, we underestimated the amount of time it would take to prepare everything. We spent countless hours researching recipes and ingredients, making and baking the goods, preparing, and finally selling them. Our first bake sale went smoothly, although the preparation beforehand did not. It was our first time baking together, and we faced many problems, such as ingredients not arriving on time, not enough bowls and baking tins, etc. However, we managed to get through everything, and hosted a successful bake sale, raising $2230. Before our second “bake sale”, we reflected back on our previous one, and took Mr. Pollock’s suggestion to do a pre-order instead! This helped us tremendously, allowing us to get an estimate of how much time and ingredients we needed. Although in the end, we raised $1420, giving us a decrease in profit, we still benefited from this decision as it allowed us to get a better grasp on customer wants, as well as develop our time management.

Jodie Fei

Statement of Impact: I have created a Wechat public account that posts 14 ‘words of the week’ every Monday and suggests one English-teaching blogger every Friday. Apart from this, in order to teach users SSAT/SAT/GRE/etc. vocabulary as well as better real-life English skills, I will also provide links to English listening practices. These resources will come from 小红书 or weibo, and maybe 知乎 or even YouTube. The Wechat public account will be open and free to everyone and promoted mainly on Weibo and Xiaohongshu by posting. This project will be started before Beyond starts, and continued throughout the future.

Further Description:

I feel that although I have not completed as much as I would’ve liked to before submitting this project, I think that this has allowed me to have a lot prepared for continuing this project in the future. I believe that I will continue to post and elaborate and maybe even create my own resources from this Wechat public account, but because of my initial for this project to sprout, I will maintain it so that this account does not monetize, and if monetizing does happen, the money earned goes to good deeds. To refer to my SMART goals that I made previously, I think that not only was I able to meet my goals for now, I was also able to meet my goals for improvement and continuity in the future, which I think is quite an achievement. This time of lockdowns in several areas and cities in China makes my project even more relevant than before because of the increasing number of people who might need it.
In general, I think that my project didn’t end up being as exciting as I hoped it would be. However, I think that I will remain passionate about this topic and continue to update my account in the future. Stay tuned!

Patrick Feng

Statement of Impact: I will give a presentation to 仁 house on April 16th, on issues related to renewable energy in order to reduce energy usage in the dorms (eg lights usage, water usage, air conditioner etc,) and enforcing this by making infographics, and putting them around the dorms to remind people about the energy usage, while also shifting the school’s reliance on energy to renewables by

Further Description:

For my E2I project, I was focused on helping the environment. My plan was to be able to not just raise awareness about renewable energy, but also implement renewable energy into our school. I was only successful in the part of raising awareness, as I wasn’t able to focus on getting solar panels. I was more focused on the direction of raising awareness, thinking that it would be easier to get it done, when it actually took more time to research, make the presentation, present it, make infographics, and getting the data points of how the presentation would affect our floor. In the end, I was able to find the average amount of energy used every day for a week in our dorms, and compared that to after I gave my presentation, and found that It had a 20% decrease. The presentation detailed information about renewable energy, and how the problem affected modern society, and how it’s relevant to our lives today, in which, I tried focusing on the more interesting information that most people haven’t heard of before, like how the amount of energy that hits the earth every hour can power the earth for an entire year. Overall, I succeeded in the action that I took, while failing to do more of the work of physically implementing the solar panels into the school, something that I could focus more on the next time I work on something similar to this.

Anabelle Fong

Further Description:

Dominic Gu

Statement of Impact: For my empathy to impact project, I created a video highlighting the evolution of environmental conservation efforts in the Xixi Wetlands (specifically its canals). I chose this method to share this knowledge online (via chinese media sites) for the purpose of achieving change locally by organizing subsequent cleanups with peers or greentown and hopefully online with the medium of comments.

Further Description:

My goal was to raise awareness by creating a short video highlighting the plastic pollution in the wetlands. I realized that the process would require extensive information and took time to collect it. I subsequently took time with my mentor Li Lao Shi to go to the wetlands to gather footage of possible polluted areas. With the realization of plastic pollution conservation on land and in water being effective there, I took a detour in my project and took time to try and contact and interview the conservation department of Xixi Wetlands management. I wasn’t able to achieve this as they constantly referred us to another number when asked, however my attempts did not die in vain. They eventually sent a few resources about the governments reports done about the pollution in Xixi Wetlands, and using this information my mentor and I went on another trip to collate a video highlighting the evolution and current clean state of the wetlands. Though I wasn’t able to find large amounts of pollution, and therefore have subsequent cleanups, in many ways that failed goal aligns with the E2I project well. The local conservation efforts were implemented and were effective to promote ecotourism in the area, and highlighting the benefits of those efforts can be my project too, as it is just the reality of the wetlands. This experience made me realize that my initial idea of success was conservation failure, when the discrepancy in initial expectations should be considered a success for documentation.

Isabelle Gu

Statement of Impact: We offered takeout meal options to fellow students and implemented a 5 to 10 yuan price markup. We have raised 848 yuan for Shati Pet Center to help support them.

Further Description:

Our goal for this project was to be able to aid Shati Pet Center by raising funds (at least 800 yuan) from our marked-up food orders. I believe that we have fully met this as we have raised 848 yuan and given it to them. This was my first time ever trying a fundraiser this way and it was certainly a new experience for me. Overall the highlight of this journey was the result, and seeing the reaction of the owner. As this process wasn't particularly fun, but extremely rewarding, especially seeing the shelter's newest dog (can be seen in our text messages uploaded)! We ran into major setbacks during this process, having to change the action due to the cancellation of our projects, the CM's getting the orders wrong, restaurants closing, etc. Yet at the end we overcame these and were able to meet our goal which is something I am extremely proud of. A key takeaway I have learned from this experience is that I always need to have a plan B or alternate solution. Due to the many sudden problems we had to scramble and figure things out along the way. But having a backup plan or being able to adapt to a situation has carried us through it. Overall, I am satisfied with this project and extremely glad I could provide help towards a cause I am passionate about.

Richard Guo

Statement of Impact: I revived the school’s solar panel to help reduce the school’s carbon footprint for one classroom and explored use cases for it.

Further Description:

In this project, I strived to revive the school’s solar panel. My original plan was to power a classroom with solar panels. This however did not work as from interviewing Mr. Li, he told me that to connect the solar panel to the school’s electric grid we would have to cut power lines and hire a professional electrician. Therefore, I resorted to my second plan, which is to turn it into an EV charger. Mr. Li helped me set up the solar panel and reactivate the power box and battery connected to it. To our surprise, after 3 years of inactivity, it still worked. After some cleaning up, I tested charging my phone on it and it worked. It also had a very stable power output that matches the outlets on our walls - around 225 W. These were good signs, as now all I have to do is to charge an EV. That’s when it occurred to me that even though I could borrow Mr. Donohoe’s EV, I could not charge it as we had no cable. And he never charges it with the battery disconnected from the EV so he doesn’t have such a cable. Mr. Langley also mentioned a good point in which I couldn’t monitor the battery’s charging state with it disconnected. So, at this point I had nothing else to do. I concluded that since the solar panel is producing stable wattage, if we did have the charger it would have worked.

Amanda Ho

Statement of Impact: My statement of impact was to change the rooftop garden outside the cafeteria into a hangout space or place to eat outside for students by adding chairs, and decorations in order to increase the interaction and good vibes between students. I worked with Ingrid to carry out this project.

Further Description:

My goal for this project was for people to spend more time outside during eating hours or just in their free time, in order to increase social interaction and good vibes between students. For my project, I planned to add chairs, bean bags and other decorations for the roof outside the cafeteria to create a more comfortable environment. I did find inspiration for this through looking at other rooftop gardens, however I don’t think I met my goals. This is mainly because most of the materials I ordered on TaoBao for this project did not arrive due to the worsening Covid Situation. I had asked beforehand whether or not there were extra furniture or decorations that I could use, however there were none available, therefore I had to resort to buying materials on TaoBao. In the end, the only resources that came were the chairs, and the beanbags, so I set them up at the side of the rooftop overlooking the field.

Ingrid Ho

Further Description:

Albert Hou

Statement of Impact: We offered takeout meal options to fellow students and implemented a 5 or 10 yuan price markup for the drinks and the food respectively, and raised 848 yuan for Shati Pet Center to fund the purchasing of dog food and other necessities and support their cause.

Further Description:

Our original project was to spread awareness and raise adoption rates at Shati Pet Center by filming a documentary and creating visual advertisements for them. However, our original plan was disrupted multiple times: our plan to travel there on a Sunday trip was discarded mainly because the permission slips could not be prepared in time, and most of the group wanted to switch to a shopping mall instead. Our back-up plan to travel there on a Wednesday with the Links group was also dissuaded due to bad weather. These surprising turns of events forced us to abandon our original project and statement of impact in favor for an easier, yet no less impactful method to help: fundraising, so that the shelter can afford to take care of and accept new animals and purchase the necessary food and necessities with the money. Due to the popularity of takeout, we thought that it would be great if we could use takeout as a way to fundraise by implementing cost markups. However, we are again beset by bad luck, for much of the South side went to buffet and much of the North side went to house dinner, reducing the demand for takeout. Moreover, Jack and Lance ordered the wrong size of drink and discovered that Blue Frog was closed down, resorting to a cheaper alternative. However, this may be a miracle in disguise, as the increased profit allowed us to surpass our original goal and raise 848 yuan for Shati Pet Center.

Nicole Huen

Statement of Impact: Created a children's storybook for children where the protagonist has a difficult home life and goes to a teacher to ask for help, demonstrating to children how if they are in these abusive situations, they do not need to keep it to themselves and they can ask for help, and also show them what these situations are.

Further Description:

I was able to finish making the rough draft of the book and use a subtle way to demonstrate child abuse, in comparison to the normal way of harsh stories and harsh statistics. However, something that was challenging for me was managing my time. This is because I was not able to completely meet all of my goals. My goal was to print the book and put it in the HK and HZ CIS libraries and also have a digital verison which I could send to people. I was not able to do this as I ended up running out of time. If I were to do this again, something I would do is pick a project which I had confidence I could finish in the time I had. Since creating a storybook is something which needs time, it was hard to complete along with the other assessments/projects I had near the time, which is a big reason why I was not able to stick to my plan. My main takeaway from this project is there are many medians people can learn from. Moreover, it is important for young children to be educated about issues such as child abuse, because without the adequate knowledge, some children in these situations may not ever know they were being abused. However, overall I think I was able to create a children's storybook that is entertaining and engaging, and educational for children.

Alayna Kwan

Statement of Impact: I changed the eating habits of my targeted community by creating a small informational booklet/pamphlet about the negative impacts the consumption of shark fin soup has on our ecosystem.

Further Description:

The goal of my E2I project was to create a pamphlet promoting the protection of sharks and discouraging people from eating shark fin soup. I have seen and been to many promotional type events for the protection of sharks, but not a lot of them seem to have made a big impact, especially on the people around me, so my target audience was family and friends I knew back in Hong Kong who ate shark fin soup. So I tried to create something that was different from other informational sources and more effective. I came to the conclusion that I need to give people an alternative. I cannot just tell people to stop abruptly, I have to provide them with something beneficial to further encourage this, so I included a recipe for imitation shark fin soup that will pique people’s curiosity and convince them to give it a try. I ended up creating an online pamphlet and sending it out through a form, with a response section afterwards, so I could measure my impact. I managed to get 64.7% of them to agree to stop, while 14.7% of them were maybe willing to try. I feel like this was pretty successful, because I got quite a lot of people to fill out the form, and I can definitely further this project as the feedback I was given has helped provide a clearer picture of what convinced my audience and what has not.

Hayden Lai

Statement of Impact: I will attempt to persuade the Hangzhou CIS administration to implement some new machine equipment into our gym such as a leg press machine, a cable machine and a hex bar. Machines are much safer and just as effective as dumbbell weights for gaining muscle.

Further Description:

My project was originally about the issue of stray dogs, I conducted some detailed research on the subject of stray dogs specifically in Hong Kong. I also created a 1 minute video where I shared a personal experience with this issue, I was passionate about stray dogs because my dog was also adopted from Hong Kong dog rescue. I wasn’t sure what I could do to help physically, so I decided to spread awareness with a youtube channel. However after careful consideration, I decided to switch to gym equipment because i felt I could make a larger impact within the CIS community with this project. I did research on gym equipment that could be implemented in our gym that is relatively cheap and high quality. I then emailed Mr Jones regarding the changes I wished to put in the gym, but he rejected my proposal because he thought students might get hurt.

Lleyton Lam

Statement of Impact: My project was to try and help primary students from years 4-6, ages 9-12 catch up with their education in replace of tutoring by promoting a learning website that helps with numerous subjects via social media platforms online for primary students who are falling behind in class.

Further Description:

Ever since the ban on tutoring, There have been many teachers that were fired, and others had their salaries cut severely. And by 2022, all tutoring across China will be outlawed. In early August alone, it is estimated that the tutoring industry had hundreds or thousands of people lose their jobs. The reason why China decided to ban tutoring is that many kids have been running to tutors to help them with their homework and get better grades. The government has blamed tutoring for driving an “unhealthy educational rat race”, and “to save the nation’s children from burnout, reduce inequality, and prevent parents feeling obliged to spend eye-watering sums on private classes'. The government’s goal is to cut the amount of homework given from school and cut after-school tuition that students receive. My goal is to advertise a learning website dedicated to helping children catch up with their work. I will plan to spread the learning website through social media like TikTok, bilibili, and kuaishou. The SDG that links with this issue is SDG 4-3, Equal access to affordable, technical, vocational, and higher education. I am happy to say that after posting the video via the social media platforms, I have reached 51 likes and 12 comments, which is really good considering that I just made my accounts a couple of weeks back and have not posted anything other than this.

Phoebe Lam

Statement of Impact: The goal of my E2I project was to encourage a healthier diet, especially for students. To achieve this, I hosted a one-day canteen event where healthy, nutritious dishes I proposed were served. After the event, I sent out a survey to all staff and students in HZCIS to let them vote on the dishes that they would like to see more often in future canteen menus.

Further Description:

To achieve my goal written in the statement of impact, I wrote an email to the canteen explaining my project and requested a meeting with them to discuss my plans. Before this step, I avoided doing too much pre-preparation on my part in case the canteen’s opinion and capability to aid me was different from expected. Luckily, the canteen manager Peggy was extremely supportive of my project and simply told me to give her a list of healthy recipes so she could let the chef choose the dishes that could be made. Something to note, however, was that the event could not be organized on the week of April 13th as planned because the canteen menu was always made one week in advance, meaning the results of my meeting could not be implemented in the following week. This was something I overlooked, so if I could do this project again, I may have saved time if I contacted the canteen earlier. Aside from that, everything proceeded according to plan; I made posters, sent an email to the whole school, and gathered people’s opinion on their preferred dishes after the event. As shown on my action plan, the canteen agreed to add the top three dishes to their future meal plans. Therefore, I think I met the goal of my project.

Rea Lam

Further Description:

Our goal at the beginning of E2I was to raise at least 500RMB through the sale of baked goods, to be donated to HER Fund. The funds were used for grant-making and capacity building in Hong Kong, HER Fund’s grantee partners bein grassroots organisations working directly in their communities to fight gender inequality. We raised $3650, which exceeded our expectations in this project, even though we only hosted 1 bake sale and 1 pre-order, as compared to our original goal of 4. Throughout our project, we underestimated the amount of time it would take to prepare everything. We spent countless hours researching recipes and ingredients, making and baking the goods, preparing, and finally selling them. Our first bake sale went smoothly, although the preparation beforehand did not. It was our first time baking together, and we faced many problems, such as ingredients not arriving on time, not enough bowls and baking tins, etc. However, we managed to get through everything, and hosted a successful bake sale, raising $2230. Before our second “bake sale”, we reflected back on our previous one, and took Mr. Pollock’s suggestion to do a pre-order instead! This helped us tremendously, allowing us to get an estimate of how much time and ingredients we needed. Although in the end, this pre-order gave us a decrease in profit, raising $1420, we still benefited from this decision as it allowed us to get a better grasp on customer wants, as well as developing our time management.

Addison Lee

Statement of Impact: My goal was to replace the perishable bins in the student dorms with recycling bins so I could reduce trash in the student dorms by 20%. I tried to achieve this by comparing the weight of the trash in the recycling bins to the weight of the trash in the perishable bins every day, for a total of seven days per bin, and than

Further Description:

My main goal was to reduce bin waste by 20% in the student dorms. To achieve this, I had two steps: one, collect data on the weight of the bins and what percent of the trash was actually the type of trash; two, schedule a meeting with Director Zhang to try and convince her to change it. However, to even start step one, I needed a scale, which I didn’t have. After 4 days, I decided I was going to buy a scale off Taobao, but before I did, my CM Weiwei said he had a scale, which I used. For the next two weeks, I took photos of the living room bins before weighing them, every night after family time. As the two weeks were nearing the end, I submitted my extension request and then organized the data in a way that would be easy to present to Director Zhang*. However, the data was quite unexpected. While I aimed to reduce waste by 20%, the results were that plastic would rid of 13.3% on average. Not only that, but the idea I had for making sure that people would throw the trash in the right bin did not work completely, so my scheduled meeting was canceled and my presentation was wasted.

Adele Li

Statement of Impact: I created signs that reminded myself and my dorm mates to turn off lights when we left the room, and recorded whether the lights were on or off on a spreadsheet to measure whether my signs lowered overall electric output. On Monday and Tuesday, I did not use signs, on Wednesday I added signs to the main light sources (hallway, room, bathroom, shower), and on Thursday and Friday I added signs to the desk lights.

Further Description:

My E2I goal was to reduce energy emissions in my dorm, which was an issue we faced because my dorm always forgets to turn off the lights. To combat this, I created signs next to light switches that reminded the last person in the room to turn off lights. I decided to collect data for a week. On Monday and Tuesday, I did not use signs, on Wednesday I added signs to the main light sources (hallway, room, bathroom, shower), and on Thursday and Friday I added signs to the desk lights. This was in part to see how the signs might help with being green, and in part to see how our dorm acted if we weren’t reminded. Here were the results:Day 1: Monday 18th83% lights on.Day 2: Tuesday 19th67% lights on.Day 3: Wednesday 20th67% lights on.Day 4: Thursday 21th33% lights on.Day 5: Friday 22th0% lights on.
Because of the signs implemented, I know that by Friday, I reduced any electronic waste by keeping lights on by 83%. We know that during these time slots, if the lights were on they stayed on and if they were off they stayed off, because a) my roomates and CM knew that if they saw a light on, they would mark it on the spreadsheet, and b) we knew when the A Yis came to clean (7:40), so they wouldn’t interfere with data.
Originally, I’d also planned to reduce shower time, and calculated my roommate's shower time per, but decided to keep it on lights because it was what I put the most time into.

Isabelle Li

Statement of Impact: Kristen and I helped Sarah to improve and clean the shati animal shelter, where there are a lot of animals, and she is the only person working there. I helped her clean the house and sweep the stairs, so that the animals could go up and down easily. Kristen and I also made a social media page on bilibili as we hope that more people will go, and know more about it. To help, we made some videos, and posted it, also asking Sarah to help us post it.

Further Description:

I feel like we didn’t exactly meet our goal, as there weren't a lot of views on that video. We also wanted to post one more video as we thought that one video wasn’t enough to persuade people to help, however, Sarah wasn’t comfortable with us sharing it to the public on the second video. She told us that she would send us other videos about the animals, but till now, she hasn’t sent any. We wanted to respect her choices, this is why we only posted one and not the second one. Although we didn’t exactly reach our goal, we were able to help go and volunteer at the shati animal shelter, to allow the animals there to live in a better environment. We went there a few times, but weren’t able to go there every Wednesday, as it was covid. In this certain time of period, although we weren’t able to meet our goals, I am quite happy about our progress as even though we weren’t able to show it, we had helped the animal shelter a lot by cleaning the place.

Kristen Liang

Statement of Impact: I organized weekly trips to Shati Animal Shelter to film and created and posted two videos raising awareness measured by the amount of inquiries and successful adoptions/fosterers/donors, all while educating our HZCIS community who come help out about the difficulties of running an animal shelter and also simultaneously helped clean up the shelter.

Further Description:

During this project, I was able to go on 3 trips to the animal shelter alongside some of my HZCIS cohort who were also interested in helping. Due to Covid, we weren’t able to go weekly, so that part of my plan was slightly changed. On the first trip, Sarah, the owner, showed us around and familiarized us with her workspace. On the second trip, we started helping clean up her outdoor area such as sweeping her stairs, picking up the loose bricks and debris in the shrubs, and cleaning out her small doghouse. The third trip was the most effective one, as we managed to wash and clean her entire house, which was originally for her, but was occupied with all her animals that had no space to live. The place was filled with dog and cat feces and torn up couches and took a lot of aggressive shoveling to clean up, but we were able to fill four trash bags full of it and washed her floor with buckets of water. After this visit, Isabelle and I worked on creating videos for XiaoHongShu, and while we ran into a problem with Sarah being uncomfortable to show the state of the house online, we posted the first one and withheld the second until she sends us more clips to use. In the future, we will give the account to Sarah for her to handle and therefore measure our effectiveness in raising awareness.

Darren Liu

Statement of Impact: I want to reduce the amount of perishable waste produced by my dorm by 50%, and increase the amount of recycling waste by 50%, by creating advertising posters and infographics informing my dorm about the harms of perishable waste.

Further Description:

At first, my project was making the recycling and perishable waste separate, because I heard from other sources that HZCIS dumps all the trash in the same place, but after email Zhao Jia, I realized we give all of our waste and recycling bags to Greentown separately, and Greentown helps us recycle, making our recycling system pretty efficient. I then changed my goal to reducing the waste produced by my dorm, and increasing the amount of trash we recycle. I did this by informing my dorm mates about the harms of trash, and putting up posters telling them to recycle.My final project was pretty successful, because I managed to increase the recycled waste by 34%, and decrease perishable waste by 28%. My numbers were obtained using Addison’s data, and for the second week, I weighed the trash myself, and marked it all down. In the future, I should extend my project longer, to around 2 weeks, because it gives my dorm mates more time to adjust and change their habits, and so I can have more time to convince my dorm mates about their bad habits, and inform them on how to solve it.My project was still pretty effective, because my dorm mates are now aware of the trash they create, and their bad habits have been corrected, and they now recycle when possible. Even though I did not meet my ambitious goal, I have still made the impact I wanted to make.

Owen Loo

Statement of Impact: I created an infographic and shared it on social media to raise awareness for free education in China.

Further Description:

My goals for this project initially was to create a infographic, then upload it to Instagram, in order to raise awareness and advocate for free education in China. I feel that I met the expectations of my goals I had from the start. My Instagram account which I uploaded to had amassed a great number of 36 people, showing that lots of people have been visiting my profile and have been looking at my infographic. My inspiration for this Impact was from my visits to my Links location, Grassroots football, where we taught autistic children football. I took great pleasure in seeing the joy and fulfillment it brought, and also felt like I was able to make a great impact to those under my tutelage. However, this also made me think about other people who still lack the education and fostering that we enjoy - for example, kids in impoverished countries and underprivileged regions such as Africa. I would not be able to personally go and teach them, but I decided that I could still leave my mark and help as many of them as I could through my e2i project and spread awareness so more people can donate and assist these kids and give them the same joy I saw on the faces of the children we taught at Grassroots.

Emily Luo

Statement of Impact: We increased awareness of gender inequality in Hangzhou CIS by starting a mini book club and hosting 3 meetings where we read short stories and news articles about gender equality issues happening globally. This was followed by small discussions where we asked stimulating questions to show the severity of this issue, in which we also conducted before vs after surveys with questions about how their awareness has developed and whether or not their mindset has changed.

Further Description:

The gender equality book club has come to a close, and it was better than we expected, with students eager to participate and asking us to continue hosting them! We have certainly met our goals and exceeded them. Our initial goal was to host 2 book clubs and have at least 3 male students and 3 female students, but as our project progressed, we decided to have an extra book club due to the high participation rate - there were up to ten people at the second session. People were excited about joining our book club, from us asking people to join to people asking us when the next one was, which made us really proud as we saw how people started becoming more enthusiastic towards gender equality related issues. Our discussions based on the articles read always went on longer than we expected, with our participants sharing their opinions on the articles we’re reading, being able to continue discussing even without us having to lead them. We’re really satisfied of how our book club went, and if we were to do it again, we would make sure to prepare more articles for our participants to encourage more meaningful discussions and try different ways of stimulating a discussion (games, interactive activities, etc.)

Micky Lyu

Statement of Impact: I minimize the diameter of plates by 1-2 inches, and provide smaller serving utensils to encourage students to claim less food and reduce excessive plate waste. I also created a festival and saw how it plays off with the amount of food wasted afterwards.

Further Description:

The idea behind the National Food Day that I’ve organized from April 18th to the 20th is mainly to reduce food waste. I’ve designed preferable menu that the CIS community enjoys and implement while giving them only 8 inch diameter disaposable plates for such meals. The method is by minimizing the size of the plate so that students and teachers would not take too much in the beginning which would result in food waste. The idea is to make them get a bit more every time after they finish so the food they get is guaranteed finished which would reduce the amount of food wasted. The festival, the so-called National Food Day is supposed to make the whole process more enjoyable other than having to be a project that everyone’s bored of participating in. Organizing this project in a festive way also testifies if relaxing atmosphere helps reduce food, which could be an effective method just standing by itself.

Adela Man

Statement of Impact: My impact for this issue was to ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes, by providing green town students free tutoring.

Further Description:

The goal of this issue is to ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable, and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes. The many issues about freeing primary and secondary education include children that can't complete their primary and secondary education, because of family issues or an equitable environment. These situations apply to most students in China, creating a cornered option to just hire a tutor. Furthermore, the tutoring ban policy in China creates a more challenging environment for both students and parents. This was where I came in to help provide free tutoring to students that I see every day; Greentown students. My Greentown friend recently had her finals coming up for English and she was struggling really badly. There were no teachers that would sacrifice their own time to teach her. There were no tutors allowed since this was against the law. And her peers were all too busy to study for the finals for themselves. We then communicated and found a time to meet u so I could help her with studying. It surprisingly went well and we spent the time effectively. We covered most of the textbook that she was going to be tested on, and by the end of our session, she felt confident on a scale of 1-10, she picked 8.5. I guess helping one student doesn’t really help my goal as a whole worldwide goal, but this was the first step toward change, and I’m proud of myself for achieving this.

Anna Oldenziel

Statement of Impact: Before the 12th of April 2022, I built 2 DIY outdoor cat shelters using plastic, styrofoam, and straw to protect the stray cats living on campus from poor weather conditions.

Further Description:

After noticing the different stray cats living around campus and struggling to make it through winter, I knew I had to do something. Especially with spring just around the corner (also known as "kitten season"), I was worried that there wouldn't be enough resources (e.g., secluded dens) to go around. Originally, I had wanted to place the DIY cat shelters near the cafeteria (on Greentown campus), where I had spotted the highest number of feral cats, but since I never received final approval from Ms Zhang, I couldn't. That's why I ended up placing the shelters at a dead end near the academic building, hidden from plain view. The cats on campus immediately took to the shelters, and the food I left out only encouraged them to explore the dens further. But I actually built the shelters for other feral cats that aren't as friendly or cared for as our cats are. Since the shelters are nearby, it's easy for me to visit them every day and refill the food and water bowls. Unfortunately, I don't know which cats have been using my shelters as Mr Donohoe doesn't have a motion-activated camera. And since I had to wait longer than expected for my materials to arrive (due to the current COVID-19 situation), I didn't have time to build the third shelter. Nevertheless, I believe that I achieved my goal of providing a safe place for stray cats (and even the occasional bird) to stay.

Adrian Pan

Statement of Impact: I printed multiple posters and taped them in country parks in an effort to create awareness about snakes and how we might be affecting their habitats, in hopes of reducing the amount of trash that people bring on their hikes. I took a photo of the mountain before the arrival of the poster and after, to measure how much of an impact I made

Further Description:

I made a lot of changes throughout this project. I started off targeting hikers on Braemar hill, but then shifted my target to a country park in kowloon. I began designing the posters using canva, and I went for a simplistic, not too wordy approach. Halfway through making it, I realized it would actually be more practical if the posters were in Chinese, so that’s what I did. After I finished, I emailed the files to my mom back in HK to help me print them out. She then went to the country park, and put up the posters on light poles, walls, and all kinds of places with people. Before all this, I had asked my mom to help me take a photo of the same park, to examine how polluted it is with trash. A few days after putting up the poster, I asked my mom to take photos of the park again, in order to see how much of an actual impact my posters had. Furthermore, for some better feedback, my mom asked some of the bypassers about their opinions of the park, and whether they think the trash they leave is affecting it. Overall, I think that I did a pretty good job reaching out to people about this issue, but I felt that I could have extended my “impact” a bit more, perhaps as Li Lao shi suggested, by displaying a rubber snake near the posters as an attraction.

Jordan Ren

Statement of Impact: We hosted 3 sessions/workshops to different groups of coach mentors here at HZCIS, and these sessions were about the importance of clean water as well as how to make a water filter. This was achieved before April 22nd and the sessions were approximately 60 minutes long; sessions would start off with an informational presentation including background information, how the water filter works, and instructions (10 minutes) and 50 minutes for the couch mentors to make the actual water filters.

Further Description:

The goals that we had first set was to create workshops and to inform people from rural areas the importance of getting a clean water source, but because of location and time constraints, we were only able to make these workshops for our coach mentors, and what we hope for them to gain is the knowledge about this topic, as well as spreading this to their friends and family. In the end, we were only able to create 2 workshops instead of 3, and we think that this could be because our time was not planned very well, but we gained a lot of experience from the first two workshops, and if given the time, we could finish the third workshop very well. From this project, we further understood how important clean water is, how to make a water filter, as well as spreading this information to the ones around us.

Chris Ruan

Statement of Impact: Stanley and I incorporated a sustainable lunch for CIS students and staff into the final Links Celebration Day on May 6th in the canteen to improve attitude towards sustainable food.

Further Description:

In our SMART goal, we stated that people don’t voluntarily try sustainable foods and many may have negative and stubborn attitudes towards it. We hope that by giving them a chance to try sustainable food people will have an improved attitude, and try it themselves or with family and friends in the future. Our measurement is 15 improvements in rating. We only asked half the students to rate their attitudes before and after eating, but we already got 19 improvements. Including the rest of the students and staff who we didn’t talk to, I think we were very successful and people in our school definitely have a better attitude towards sustainable food. I think we could improve by telling people what sustainable food actually means, maybe verbally or by a poster. We only did this by talking about it to people who came to the showcase, and others if they asked what we meant when we asked for a rating. The graph we found was really helpful where it showed how much each ingredient uses things like land and water, and shows cows use a lot and crops use less. I’m really thankful to the canteen and Peggy who did so much work for us. She made it really easy for us. We thought that we would need to come up with the menu and discuss a lot, but she understood our goal and proposal and took everything into her own hands.

Ivanna Sheh

Statement of Impact: Raise fundraiser money by allowing takeout (charge extra that goes to charity) to donate to HKDR and SPCA.

Further Description:

For our E2I project, we raised money to support animal shelters in Hong Kong (HKDR and SPCA). Our goal was to make an impact by raising money, so that these shelters could improve their shelter conditions. This is needed because the living conditions and environment of an animal shelter is really important to the animals living in it, and by having an improved living condition, it would greatly benefit the animals within the shelter. Additionally, these shelters have been struggling recently because of covid, especially being short of manpower. Although we aren’t physically there, we would support in any way possible that would make the lives of these workers easier, and help to support all their needs. Therefore, we decided to fundraise to provide more opportunities to these shelters.To achieve our goal, we allowed takeout every Thursday from various different restaurants such as Heytea, Starbucks, Chocmons, Wasabiya… We charged an extra $5-$10 dollars per item our CIS body ordered so that they would go to HKDR and SPCA. In the end we transferred all of our money to our parents and they transferred it into a check that we will be giving to these charities in the summer.

Stanley Su

Statement of Impact: For this project, Chris and I created a menu based on sustainable foods on May 6th during lunch for our CISHZ Community in order to change people’s negative impressions for sustainable foods.

Further Description:

We had several doubts about our project throughout our process, mainly because we struggled to find a medium between something sustainable, healthy, and something that tastes good. We were very worried the night before that other people wouldn’t enjoy our food, as the menu - if I was completely honest, didn’t look all that appetizing. Something that made it more stressful was that when we were interviewing people about their thoughts on sustainable foods prior to our event, a lot of them rated it very low, and some were even frowning at the menu during our e2i showcase in the beginning.When lunch finally happened though, we were delighted to see some people actually enjoying the food, telling us that it tasted a lot better than they expected it to be. Furthermore, when we collected their opinions after they had the food, a vast majority of them showed a big improvement in their attitude toward sustainable food. Even though the impact we made wasn't as major as some others, the fact that we were able to impact just a few felt really accomplished. To some extent, we were able to achieve our goal, but I thought that we could've spent more time refining the menu as a lot of them stated sustainable food for them will still remain an option, as supposed a priority. If we had more time to find tastier dishes, maybe the impact we could've made would be bigger.

Irma Sung

Statement of Impact: My Empathy to Impact Project was a project aimed to promote the importance of wetlands to the younger generation. By organizing a trip with other students, I wish to see a change in the future of the popularity of visitation in wetlands and other natural sites.

Further Description:

My E2i project was a chance for students to visit the Xixi Wetlands and spend a day in nature. During this trip, I took some of my friends to the National Wetlands museum located in the Xixi Wetlands as well as took them to the Statue park nearby. By bringing them to the museum, we were able to learn more about wetlands in China as well as global ecosystems such as mangroves, swamps and more. We had a relaxing Sunday afternoon in nature and were also able to learn more about our planet and its fascinating systems. During this process, I wanted to organize multiple trips to increase the amount of students that could visit the wetlands. However due to logistics and incline in covid cases, that proved to be harder and I was only able to bring one group of students to the wetlands. In the future, I hope to organize more trips either in HangZhou or in Hong Kong. This project helped me realize that even though I could only reach out to a certain group of people in my community, messages spread between peers and that information could inspire and help others find things that make them happy. Overall, I am really proud of my project and happy I was able to have a relaxing day with my peers in nature and also educate them of something I am passionate about.

Julian Sung

Statement of Impact: I weighed and tracked trash output in our dorms to put our wastes into perspective and tried to find ways to discourage pointless trash.

Further Description:

For a week, I tracked the amount of trash that my house was putting out. This number varied due to a variety of different factors (Saturdays we would have more takeout trash and Sundays we would have less since we were out). Despite the fact that both dorms’ snack bars were not in business (out of stock/shut down), the amount of trash we created was still a lot, especially considering the trash we collect in our room/living room bins is only a fraction of our actual wastes. The cleaning people take away a portion of it in the morning as well so my data was only partial. After that, I sent a survey to members of my house which we filled out and I found their opinions. Before seeing the data some of them thought we were creating too much trash and some weren’t, but after seeing it everyone agreed it was more than they expected and some opinions were changed. After that, I discussed with my Head of House on how to help this situation, but my original idea of incorporating it into Likes was denied and most others had already been considered in previous years but turned down due to practicality. I feel like I met my goal to the extent that I did my things, but not in a way that actually would make the difference (implementing something).

Matthew Tai

Statement of Impact: My goal is to reduce paper waste in schools by implementing paper recycling bins in classrooms.

Further Description:

I gathered 3 recycling bins in total that are strictly for paper. I’ve contacted the school administration to make this happen. I placed one of the bins in the design lab storeroom, which has tons of scrap leftover cardboards. I also placed two recycling bins in the English and Math classroom. As mentioned in my one minute video, English and Math are the subjects that normally have the highest paper usage, there often were times when we were handed copies of articles or worksheets which eventually will end up in the trash. I informed the respective teachers for approval and also so that they can be fully aware of it.

Caitlyn Tang

Statement of Impact: I organized and hosted weekly online English classes for primary aged children from FuYang Democracy School, where the majority of students are from low income households and migrant families.

Further Description:

As the Fuyang Links location hasn't been able to open this year, I wanted to find a way to continue helping their community. My goal was to find a way to reach out, interact and help their community, whether it be an online activity or preparing materials to send out to them.I talked to the former links leaders from Fuyang and found out that they would help build the playground and teach students English. I wanted to bring some components of links into the project, and since building a playground requires physical work, teaching English was the most feasible solution. After some communication, I had the incredible opportunity to video call 30 students and teach them English classes online. The students' enthusiastic smiles and eagerness during these sessions definitely made these classes a joy to teach, and I am so glad I had the opportunity to be able to do this.As these sessions went on, more of my peers came to help out in these classes, and the group teaching grew bigger and bigger. I saw the willingness to help within our community and it was amazing seeing everyone so happy to help. I also learned to find opportunities and that there is always a way to help a community, and to not let covid stop us. I hope that if links in this location can’t open in the future, this could be an alternative that students can look into and continue teaching these students, online or not.

Renita Tang

Statement of Impact: My E2i project was LGBT advocacy through the school’s Gender Sexuality Alliance, I drew visual aids and found people around the school during self directed times to listen to me speak about topics about “Supporting your LGBT friends” and “What to do if you’re struggling with your identity” and giving the participants pride bookmarks to show their allyship.

Further Description:

I met the goals for sure, since I measured it through how many people I reached and using this cool mathematical formula I learned in math, the square root of the total student population is how many students I should present to. The square root of 70 is 8-ish, so the ideal goal was to reach 8 people. I managed to reach 11 students and 2 teachers, which makes 13 total, 5 more than the expected 8. I definitely reached my goal as they all agreed to allyship and received the bookmark! Additionally, I submitted this to the HK GSA, so they can use it to make an impact for the HK campus which is an added bonus! I was surprised with how welcoming people were to this idea, because I was originally very shy about it, but also people who gave me feedback on how to better improve my project to make it more impactful, like telling people to question their identity is probably more harmful to them if they’re not actually LGBT, so I made sure to add that to my presentation of doubt which overall made it more helpful for everyone!I enjoyed drawing, I liked how I could express this in a cute way that I was proud to create :). Overall, I feel that I made an impact in allyship in our school, I’ve learned much more about the topic not only through research, but through the people I presented to and I’m proud of this!

Tom Tang

Statement of Impact: To improve the mental well-being system at Greentown, I collected quantitative and qualitative data from their students and identified the potential problems/flaws in Greentown’s system. I have shared these data with Greentown so that the school can strategically plan the next few years based on the problems that their students feel are the most significant.

Further Description:

My project splits into two parts. The first part is collecting qualitative data through building connections and having in-depth interviews with the Greentown students. To achieve this, I hosted a mafia night and interviewed each participant from Greentown at the end of the night. This method was very effective because it helped me meet my goal of interviewing five students. Furthermore, because of the connections we have established during the mafia game, each of them was sincere and detailed in their responses, providing me with valuable information to present to the school’s leadership team. To meet my goal of getting responses from at least 50 people for quantitative data, I was initially going to send out surveys at the Greentown cafeteria and the May 6th carnival. However, I quickly realized that the student body at Greentown’s cafe was too diverse (while I only wanted year 11s), and also people were too busy chatting with their friends and eating their food and won’t have time to do my forms. As for the May 6th carnival, I realized that people were very mobile, so it would be better to proactively approach them on the track and ask them a few questions on the form rather than have them sit down to do it. In the end, I collected 29 responses by doing this. Although I didn’t meet my original goal of 50, I think these responses and the in-depth interviews match well enough to help Greentown identify its most apparent problems and hopefully improve its students’ well-being.

Alex Tanner

Statement of Impact: I made an infographic with internship and educational options for CIS HZ students to persuade them to pursue the industries of our future.

Further Description:

I made an infographic that will include the top five specific future job opportunities for CIS students to pursue in the future. I will include specifics and some links to some job experience/learning opportunities if students actually have an interest in these subjects and look to pursue it. The infographic consist of 3 main points for each job section. A picture, a brief introductory paragraph and a link to an intern/learning opportunity. Keeping the information provided briefly in my opinion is critical, if there is too much information in your face at one time, the reader may feel discouraged to continue reading and simply skip on. Which obviously is not the intended effect. The infographic turned out to be a huge success and many students on my floor read it and are even considering taking further steps into the internship/educational opportunities that my brochure provides.

Sylvia Tseng

Statement of Impact: I created a booklet about how to use the basic functions in WeChat and distributed them to elderlies through online and offline methods in China, in order to help those who previously couldn’t use smartphones to be and feel more connected with the rest of the population.

Further Description:

I had three goals in total. First, create the booklet on how to use WeChat. Second, reach 20 seniors with my booklet: I managed to have it introduced to 55+ elderlies, through my grandparents. Third, help 5 seniors to learn how to use/ better their knowledge of WeChat to the extent that they feel genuinely benefitted. This was more difficult to measure. Although two of my grandparents directly claimed that my booklet helped them use WeChat more easily and conveniently, I didn’t know the extent of help the rest of my audience thought the booklet was. The same problem occurred with offline distributing: I successfully passed out five copies, and as I walked away, I observed that the seniors were reading and examining the booklets intently. But I can’t locate them again later and survey them on whether or not the booklet created a (positive) change, so that was the most response I could get. I have, however, learned many things: how to adjust my expectations on my productivity levels (I wanted to create one booklet per week throughout the action phase at first), time management skills, how to approach strangers on the street, and the fact that most of the time, people will think you’re advertising and turn away when they see you holding a booklet. But overall, it was a great experience and I’m glad I at least met the majority of my goals.

Zoe Wai

Further Description:

Sophia Wang

Statement of Impact: Create a piece of abstract art based on a specific Greentown person’s experience and display it in the library by April 16 in order to create a 20% increase in awareness (with at least 40 people surveyed) on the effects of discrimination in education on mental health. Create merchandise (tote bags, t-shirts, phone cases, etc.) in connection with the Young Health Programme, sell it on the CISHK campus, raise 1000HKD for their training programmes focusing on adolescent health and mental issues.

Further Description:

For this E2i project, I worked with Gigi on a project focusing on target 4.5, the impacts of discrimination in education on mental health. We researched about our topic as well as styles of art and surveyed Greentown people, then expressed our findings through abstract paintings. We then displayed our paintings in our school library with captions next to them explaining what they mean and then surveyed our student body to determine the impact our art might have had. We had originally planned to print our art on merchandise and sell it in order to raise money for the Young Health Programme, however this was deemed unrealistic due to lack of time and resources as well as the strict COVID restrictions that led to delays in taobao orders for the tote bags and blank phone cases that we needed. We now intend to carry that portion of the project out when we return to Hong Kong, selling the merchandise amongst the CIS community there. In this picture, you can see our abstract art project. Through our research, we found that p eople tend to link red with anger, and it is recognized as a color that increases physiological vigilance, and subconsciously recognized as a sign to prepare for danger. The vivid green and yellow depict the social anxiety that the students we interviewed felt as a result of their educational discrimination. The black and brown represent the experience's heaviness, while the dark colors in general represent the art's dismal tone. Color was employed in our work to try to evoke empathy in the audience - even if they didn't know the full story.

Shuwen Wen

Statement of Impact: I organized an activity where people at HZCIS race in wheelchairs to allow them a taste of the hardships of traveling as someone disabled, creating empathy and a willingness to help those individuals, thus having a positive impact on the communities around us.

Further Description:

Originally, my project included both crutches and wheelchairs, but unfortunately the crutches were taken and not returned so I could not use it. This activity took place on our campus, on the path to the canteen. Unfortunately, I did not meet my goals of 20 participants, which I think is due to the bad time I had chosen. Many people had volleyball, or were filming, or were studying for the upcoming exam, so not many people had time to join. I only reached ¼ of my goal, but I felt that the participants all had fun, and most of them made comments about how hard it was, which I had hoped would happen and could promote empathy and a willingness to help those that are physically disabled. As for the form, most people that participated found that traveling in a wheelchair is a lot harder than they anticipated, which was my goal. In addition to that, a links leader has reached out to me about doing an activity like this again at the links carnival, with a wheelchair obstacle race, which means I will be having a bigger impact.

Gigi Xiao

Statement of Impact: We created and displayed a piece of abstract art in the library, inspired by interview responses provided by a Year 11 Greentown student’s experiences of mental health discrimination in education. The art work led to a 20% increase in awareness amongst the 40 people surveyed on the presence and consequences of this discrimination amongst CIS Hangzhou students. The final stage of our process will be to create merchandise with the same partistic creations for sale amongst the CIS Braemar Hill community, raising at least HK$1000 that will be donated to the Young Health Programme to fund training programmes that focus on adolescent health and mental issues.

Further Description:

For my Empathy to Impact, I worked with Sophia on a project about the effect of discrimination in education on mental health. Our findings were expressed through abstract art, which is now displayed in the library. After displaying the art, we surveyed the student body to determine if they had seen our pieces and what impact they might have had. We originally planned to do something on a wider scale, creating merchandise with the art we made, but this was unfortunately not possible because of COVID restrictions that led to delays in taobao orders for the tote bags and blank phone cases that we needed. We now intend to carry that portion of the project out when we return to Hong Kong, selling the merchandise amongst the CIS community there. Our piece of abstract art is shown in the photo here. In our research, we found that people tend to associate red as a colour of anger, and is recognised as a colour that increases physiological vigilance, and subconsciously recognised as a sign to prepare for danger. The bright green and yellow represent the social anxiety the student we interviewed experienced after their experience with discrimination in education. The black and brown represent the kind of darkness of the experience - and the dark colours overall represent the dark mood of the art. The use of colour in our art was used to try and evoke empathy for the viewer - even without knowing the full story.

Jasmine Zhang

Statement of Impact: We contacted The JinLin Reading center to play 3 educational videos (visual arts, english reading and dancing) we made to kids aged 4 to 10, to expose them to a wider range of interest. The impact will be measured through a video of the JinLin teachers asking the kids how they feel about the videos and whether or not they feel more interested in that specific subject.

Further Description:

The reason why we chose to teach art rather than more academic related subjects is because kids in China have many opportunities of being exposed to academics, but not all have the chance to experience art subjects. Also because I have had experience in doing volunteer education for a week. I realized that it is almost impossible to actually teach these students useful academic knowledge in such a short period of time. But it is possible to plant the interest of art in their hearts. We think we have met 70% of our goals because the JinLin reading center has agreed to play our videos, but we have not yet received the feedback video. My key takeaway in this project is that I should always have a plan B. Because at first I wanted to do something completely different, but due to covid I had to switch into this instead. But when I lost my first idea I was really panicking and didn’t know what to do. I could have prevented that if I had a plan B.

Tingting Zhang

Statement of Impact: Created 2 educational and fun videos and sent them to JinLin Foundation for usage at rural schools in Zhejiang to expose underprivileged children to a wider variety of extracurricular activities

Further Description:

After discovering an opportunity at JinLin Reading Foundation during a Links trip, my initial idea was to travel to rural schools in Zhejiang and provide teaching support (支教). However this idea soon became unfeasible due to a myriad of reasons such as the pandemic. Upon communicating with teachers at JinLin Foundation, we then identified that children from rural villages here in Zhejiang often lack extracurricular activities, and as a result are not as exposed to the outside world. Hence this is where we found the need for our project: Jasmine and I collaborated together with the aim of creating two educational, engaging and interesting videos for JinLin Foundation to send to schools in rural areas as a form of indirect service. We started by identifying our strengths, such as our hobbies and the advantage of being able to speak English fluently. In the end we exceeded our original goal by creating three videos: 1) A dance tutorial, 2) A painting tutorial, and 3) a video of us reading an English Children’s book. Through this project we were able to use our own experiences and knowledge for a good cause and do what we truly enjoy to create a beneficial impact.

Dora Zhao

Statement of Impact: I started an education institution named BetterChoice, which aims to provide students with more insight and knowledge about different career paths and fields of study, assisting them in making more informed and confident choices. I created a Wechat official account for my institution, feel free to subscribe! Along with that, I also collaborated with AMEF HK, and initiated 6 passion workshops with children aged 4-8, the workshops aims to introduce and inspire kids to fields of interest and passion.

Further Description:

My project goal was to create an impact on the education of students, whether it’s assisting them in making more informed or confident choices, or inspiring and igniting their interest in new interests and passions. I believe that I have achieved these goals throughout my e2i project, where I started my very own institution, collaborated with a local charity and created 6 workshops. In the journey of finding empathy, I have increased my knowledge and understanding of the current problems in the education system. I recognized the issue that many students don’t have the privilege to receive a prior outlook on a field of study or career before making a life impacting decision on what they study in university. I have grown up attending career workshops, and was constantly introduced to different fields of interest and passion that still impacts me till this day. I profoundly understand how these privileges that I was given have helped me develop and improve as an individual. Thus I wanna provide this opportunity for other people as well, this was my intention of starting BetterChoice. BetterChoice is my proudest piece of creation in this project, and it will definitely be a project that I will continue to dedicate towards even after the project closes to an end. Furthermore, I am really glad that I was able to make a small impact with my own power through collaborating with AMEF and initiating the passion workshops, I was able to play an impact in the minds of 50 students that attended my workshop, this first step allowed me to gain a much larger view on the issue of lack of resources and exposure in lower income families, and ignited my enthusiasm to continue making a change. Overall, E2I was such an amazing progress, it allowed me to connect with the community, recognize issues, build compassion, and through empathy, make an impact.

William Zhao

Statement of Impact: I have create infographics to inform people about the cruel ways dogs and cats are being treated and to promote adoption. This has been posted on a public Weibo page. Desmond has created an online pledge which was sent to every student on campus, and was also included on the Weibo page, to make sure people do not participate in animal cruelty, so not only are we informing people, we are also encouraging adoption, and dicouraging animal cruelty.

Further Description:

The main goals Desmond and I had were to create a video, an infographic, and an online pledge. I feel like our plan was actually quite feasible. We would do research the first lesson, this would mainly be for the infographic, and creating the online pledge, and on second lesson we would visit the adoption center and make the video. The video would consist of animal footage, and interviews with the staff working there. But our plan gone astray as when we tried to contact the adoption center we got no response. We tried many times after that, but the same happened. We also couldn’t contact any other adoption centers, and most were outside of west lake area. This set us back a lot, and on the second lesson, when we were supposed to visit the center, we instead finished the infographic and online pledge. Finally on the last day. We seeked advice from Ms Doyle, as to what we should do. She suggested working with another group as they were doing a similar project. They could help us promote our infographic and pledge on their Weibo page. So along with that, we also sent a mass email to the Hangzhou CIS students with our pledge. Afterwards we received upwards to 50 responses, and our infographics were successfully posted on the Weibo page. Despite the many challenged we faced and the goals we failed to achieve, I believe this has been a valuable experience, I got to work with other with similar passions and values as I do, I took action and made an impact, and I also learned how I could manage and plan better for unexpected set back for the future.

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