• What was the mission or aim of your project?

When we first started the project, our goal was to create a climate box for those whose homes had been destroyed by natural disasters. The climate box was for a collection of necessary elements that can aid in individual needs. We reversed direction when we realized that delivering to areas inside our neighbourhood, as well as producing the necessary supplies, would be inconvenient. We came up with two ideas. One option was to visit a homeless shelter and donate things, but we couldn't relate it to the major issue of our project, climate change. Our second and last idea was to educate young people about the dangers of climate change and its implications in their lives. Assisting them in gaining an understanding of what they can do to help stop it as the future generation.

• Why was this your mission?

The idea was that education is critical in the worldwide struggle against climate change. Awareness of this phenomenon assists young people in understanding and responding to the effects of global climate change, as well as motivating them to change their behaviour and confront what is now a worldwide catastrophe. As a result, boosting knowledge is a crucial aspect of adapting to the effects of climate change, enhancing adaptability, and lowering overall risk. Teaching youngsters about this real-life difficulty aids them in developing a more thorough answer.

• What impact did you have?

Unfortunately, we didn't receive the feedback we had been hoping to receive from the class. Initially, we wanted to get pictures of the kids work on the worksheets and the Kahoot scores, but the teacher didn't take pictures and doesn't seem to be currently answering her email. But (relying on the previous email she had sent), we can assume that the children had a positive reaction to the video. She said that they enjoyed the presentation and Kahoot, meaning that we succeeded in making an impact on a small number of students. Hopefully, our presentation widened their knowledge and perception of climate change.

• How successful was your action (it's OK if it didn't go as planned)? Did you meet your goal?

I'd say that the action was fairly successful. Our first plan proved to be very unsuccessful, but we jumped back just in time to do a different project and complete it within the due date. Our goal was to reach out to as many students as possible to teach them about Climate Change and its effect on our world and life. We were successful, because even though we were only able to reach out to one class, we got great feedback from the teacher.

• What contributed to your group's success (or lack of success)?

The main reason for our lack of success in our first project was lack of communication and under thinking. We didn't plan out what we would do if we didn't get accepted by our chosen organization, nor did we have a backup organization. We were all action and no thinking. But, while this made us fail our first project, it contributed immensely to our final project. We planned out everything and made sure to have backup plans. We made sure to choose a realistic, simple, and quick project to accommodate for the lack of time we had left. Another contribution to our success was that everyone was stressed to finish the project on time. The people that were slacking off got back on their feet and everyone managed to complete their scripts and voice recordings (mostly) on time.

• What would you do differently if you could?

We would have made a fool-proof plan of actions followed up by two backup plans. We would have also chosen a realistic project that accommodates the fact that we're doing a high school project and on a deadline. We would also plan out to do recordings and such in person at school, possibly recording an introduction and conclusion video as a group, to get the children more enticed to listen (because I've found that seeing the speaker talk while showing visuals attracts more attention that just a recording playing with a few pictures, especially since these are children and have much shorter attention spans).

• Kiah Leflar

This experience was an interesting one. I believe I got along well with my teammates. Though it was rough from being rejected and having to rethink our project, switch from in person to online and all that. I will say it took a bit out of me yet hopefully everyone found it rewarding. I got to know my teammates a lot better through this project, it made them seem less of strangers compared to others. I think the part that made it more fun was the physical interaction and little talks between work. If anyone considers that bad, so be it but it made them feel more human rather than a mindless work oriented robot business partner. Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing it finished after the rough times and working through it together rather than alone. Hopefully the kids that see it get motivated and learn a thing or two at least.

• Taif Siyih

Working with my teammates was a joyous yet challenging experience. Having faced many obstacles with rejection, limited resources, and restricted time. Our first idea was climate boxes and we were confident it was going to succeed. However, after receiving the email back from the organization they pointed out the major flaws in our project. After having spent sometime on the climate boxes we were left with nothing and quickly developed two ideas. One was to donate to homeless shelters and the other was educating students about climate change. We finally decided to educate students as it would show progress in long term. Everyone was keen and determined to present quality work for the students and ourselves. I loved working with this group and hope the students were inspired.

• Emma Aubut

It was rewarding working on this project with my group because we faced many challenges that we worked together to overcome. Having to create a new project idea and working efficiently with our limited time wasn’t easy, but it was gratifying when we managed to get it done. I’m glad I worked with a group that stayed in contact with each other and played roles that best worked with our individual strengths.

• Sophie Longval

At first, tackling a climate action project this big seemed like a daunting task and I wasn’t sure if it would end well. I felt especially worried once we realized that making climate disaster relief boxes was not a realistic plan and we had to start from scratch. However, I feel very proud that we managed to pull through and get our project finished. Although we were only able to teach one class, even something as little as that can trigger a domino effect and make a huge difference. Who knows? Perhaps one of those students will grow up to become an environmentalist. In the end, the effort we put into this project was worth it because we got to hear about how much the kids enjoyed it.

• Sopika Ramesh

We had many ups and downs throughout the months, but I valued the communication and residents as a group. I loved how, despite our initial problems in developing an idea, we were able to work in the end. It wasn't simple, with the change from in-person to in-class, internet issues, and having little time to meet multiple deadlines, but it was all a truly magnificent experience when everything came together.

• Judy Abdalla

Throughout the course of this assignment, I realized how valuable experience really is. In the beginning, I was overly confident in my work and held immense pride, thinking that nothing could bring us down; we made phone calls on the second day of working on the project, we had everything ready and planned out. I only began to be stressed when I started to realize that the Climate Box project wasn't realistic and was out of our capabilities and timeline. We were running short on time, and our initial plan was failing. One of the things that I'm extremely proud of is how fast we changed our plan and how fast we got started on creating scripts and planning our video. I communicated with a handful of principles and teachers, but we only ended up with one class. Still, I'm grateful that we ended up with a class to share our presentation with at all, as we contacted the teachers fairly late and needed results quickly to meet our deadline. Though we are late with our project, we still got everything done in a significantly short amount of time, and for that I'm grateful for my group members.

• Ahmad Asmar

Working on the project seemed easy at first but then we got the rejection email. We started panicking because we were rushing to find another thing we can do fast. We had two plans, to help the homeless or to teach students. We chose to teach students because it was more of a however we sent an email to Value Village about the blankets before we chose so I had to go pick them up. So we started debating again to figure out which ones to do. We had a hard beginning but once we got everything we all were able to work together and finishing it quickly.

• Pitch a next phase for your project.

We managed to teach only one class about climate change. Our next phase for our project is to educate as many kids as we can to boost knowledge and motivate them to change their behavior and confront what is now a worldwide catastrophe.

• Inspire a future group of students to pick up where you left off.

We’re the next leaders of the countries on Earth. The generations above us won’t do anything about it due to selfish and ignorant reasons. For most of the companies in the world their only goal is to make money, however switching to climate friendly means is usually very bad for their profit. This makes them turn their back on climate change and pretend it doesn’t exist. Although the Government of Canada has been introducing carbon taxes for the last couple of years, the government just needs the economy to grow. This is where they went wrong and it’s our responsibility to educate and motivate the coming generations so the whole population of Earth can live sustainably. We only taught one class, envision the impact of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of students.

“Educating is the first step to promoting climate change”

• Why is this an important cause? Why should they continue with it?

For numerous years people have been neglecting the negative changes of the Earth. Millions are suffering more everyday due to the actions of anthropogenic factors. The same way the government decides what students should learn is what we’re pushing to promote. We believe that with proper understanding of the world the newly existing generation will be empowered with the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes needed to act as agents of change.

• Where would you like to see it go next.

We would like this project to reach a bigger and diverse audience. Teaching at different schools would likely cause the domino effect on older students to do the same(teaching) and reach a larger audience each time.