spread the net
Student Names: Amelia Mcbane, Ahmad Baytamouni, Poigai Sivakumar, Monya Ghoneim, Sarah Khreis, Jaydyn Neville, Wren Gaceta and Kayla Pearce
Project GOAL
What was the mission or aim of your project?
The mission of our project was to fundraise money for mosquito nets which then would hopefully result in reducing the spread of malaria due to protection.
Why was this your mission?
This was our mission because so many people, especially in Africa have been affected by Malaria and since they don’t have the same opportunities and commodities as we have, we decided to help them.
ACTION
What action did you take?
As a group, we all took steps to lead us where we are today. A list of steps we took are:
Post on social media
Place posters around the school
Hosted a fundraiser
Researched more on Malaria and mosquitoes and how they are connected, both with each other and with Climate Change
How did you get your audience involved?
We created announcements at school and convinced our teacher to dye her hair any colour if we met our goal of money fundraised. We also talked to each class about our mission and the spread of malaria.
How did you educate your audience about the issue/event? Include images from your social media campaign.
We promoted by making Instagram posts, flyers, posters, and announcements. Click the link below to see our Instagram Posts.
The pictures on the sideshow how our poster looked as well an ending post. Take a look :)
Reflection
What impact did you have?
With the money we raised, we raised enough for around 90 mosquito nets. We think we had a compelling impact on our project. We believe that this project made a difference and helped people understand and realize what was going on around the world. By spreading awareness and educating many people such as teachers and students as well as ourselves. The results from our fundraiser we composed were astonishing, we managed to raise over $900, which would result in 90 mosquito nets!
How successful was your action (it's OK if it didn't go as planned)? Did you meet your goal?
Our project ended up being very successful and went as planned we exceeded our goal far more than we were expecting and ended up raising over $900 when our original goal was $200.
What contributed to your group's success (or lack of success)?
What contributed to our group's success was that we did lot to raise awareness around the school so that people knew about the fundraiser. For example, we put posters up around the school, made multiple Instagram posts and announcements, and sent an email to parents.
What would you do differently if you could?
We could have emailed teachers about what's going on and things about the topic to get them more aware instead of relying on kids to listen to the announcements. We also could have emailed or messaged the @Jmss.studco Instagram account to see if they would post something about our fundraiser because more students follow and check that school account than the @jmss.sci account.
WHERE IT COULD GO NEXT...
Pitch a "next phase" for your project.
If other classes would like to continue on our project, the next phase would be to do more promotions. Such as contacting John McCrae Secondary School's student council and promoting the fundraiser more. Also maybe use a different strategy instead of asking a teacher to dye her hair, such as a final game, raffle or more. In addition, we focused on students only at JMSS, the future classes should try to expand the audience, like students at other schools, those who come to a community center and more. Overall, we hope that the future classes join our team and help battle Malaria.
Inspire a future group of students to pick up where you left off.
It would be great if a class or a group of students are interested in supporting our cause. When we agreed to this cause, as a group most of us didn't understand the connection between Malaria and climate change. But continuing with the project and doing more research we begin to realize the concerns. Many youths are just like this. Malaria and climate change is a major problem that humans are blind to. Educating those around us is important, that's why it's important to expand on the project.
Why is this an important cause? Why should they continue with it?
Malaria and mosquitoes are an important cause because malaria is a dangerous disease and many have turned a blind eye towards it, many not on purpose but because it is not always talked about. Even though it spreads fast and humans aren't fighting against it but subtly helping it with climate change. As youth are the future generation we need to educate others to have a better understanding of how climate change is impacting malaria.
Where would you like to see it go next?
We would like to see the project go to a different audience. Possibly, different schools and more into the community. Also, get more people educated on the cause and promote it a lot better.
Self Reflection
Amelia: This project was a fun way to learn about a topic and issue that wouldn't normally find itself being talked about in a grade ten science classroom. I didn't know very much about the malaria crisis or how parasitic illnesses worked in general and this was a good way to learn about it while also collaborating with classmates to aid the issue. I feel that now I have a good grasp on how malaria and other parasites work and would be able to explain to others, which was part of our goal at the beginning; To raise money for the Spread the Net organization, but also to educate ourselves and help educate others on the topic.
Ahmad: The Youth Action project was a very fun and enjoyable journey. My group and I have learned so much about this topic and about each other. We've all contributed and worked very well together on the project. When we first started this project I had no clue about this issue, and about how climate change was affecting it by a significant amount. Over the weeks we've researched, spread awareness, and fundraised, I've learned so much about mosquitoes, and malaria. Not only was my group and I educated but we also put a great amount of effort into educating people in our school such as students and teachers. We created announcements, posters, and summarized what we've been doing on social media. As the researcher in my group, I helped research and discover a lot about the spread of malaria, and how we can prevent it. With decided to fundraise for mosquito nets which would protect humans against mosquitoes bites which would result in less spread of malaria. During the fundraiser, we went to different classes in our school and talked about the issue and collected money so we can purchase these mosquitoes nets. At the end, we collected about $900 which is astounding! I'm very happy to have learned about this issue and to have worked with my group members, I hope we have made a difference by making people's life in Africa safer and comfortable with the money we fundraised.
Poigai: It was fun working on a project that connects to biology. I liked being able to fundraise as a group and being able to figure out the minor problems that had occurred along our journey. In the beginning, I understood how malaria was a dangerous disease and how it is spread by small insects called mosquitos. I also believed that humans were only doing good to help fight malaria. Unfortunately, with research, I learned we help the spread of climate change. Working on this project made me understand that we can still win the battle against malaria. Even though our project has come to a final I would love to continue studying the biology portion and fight against Malaria. Furthermore, in this journey, I helped do research about malaria and contacted Rick mercer to promote our campaign. I was also the secretary so I took care of minor changes like checking grammar, counting cash, talking to classes and more.
Monya: This project was very fun. I've learned so much about Malaria itself, cooperation, teamwork and how mistakes shouldn't bring us down, but it should make us want to go further and learn more. This project has taught me about the severity of Malaria and how it connects with so many things. I loved working with this team and we all found a way to come together and succeed. All of us put a great amount of effort into educating people by posting on social media and placing posters around the school. I am very fortunate to have been the social media person because I got to educate our audience about the topic and got to post about our journey and our updates. I am so happy on how far we've came and how we exceeded our goal by so much. Hopefully all our fundraiser money can make families/people in Africa's life safer and better. This was such a substantial journey/opportunity and hopefully this can take off to something bigger.
Sarah: The climate change youth action project was a great journey that would not be complete without the goal oriented, critical thinking mindset. We have all contributed as a group to make the Spread The Net campaign work out. In the begging, we were very unsure of what option to make out youth action project topic. As a group we decided that we are interested on learning and educating others about malaria. We spoke about the impacts of malaria such as going to classrooms and doing announcements, informed our school about our fundraiser, by making posters around the school, and the office making announcements. I am grateful to have educated others about the spread of malaria, as being the second social media person. My happiest part throughout this project was succeeding in our fundraiser. Who would have known a group in grade 10 science can help others by reducing the spread of malaria? We exceeded our goal by a great amount. I am beyond happy that we have reached our goal. It was a super astonishing moment that I am proud of knowing I can at least help one person in Africa.
Jaydyn: This project was very interesting to learn about. I liked that we got to take it into our our hands and come up with a fundraiser and advertise on our own. The experience of campaign and getting the rest of school involved I found was cool and that people actually donated to our project was crazy and especially that we reached and went over our goal. I enjoyed the people I worked with, coming to this class late in the semester was difficult but getting to know the people in my group made me more comfortable. In the end I got a lot out of this project, learning about malaria, meeting new people, campaigning strategies and much more that I feel that I can use the experiences from this project in my everyday life.
Wren: I really enjoyed working on this project, it was fun and interactive with other students as well as teachers in the school. I really liked the group I got to work with, everybody got along very well which made working on this a lot easier to get done. I felt very accomplished when we were counting the money seeing how the numbers just kept going up when I did not at all expect to exceed our goal.
Kayla: This project was a really fun experience and taught me a lot. When we first started I didn't know much about malaria in mosquitoes especially the effects it has not just on our health but with climate change as well. Our group got together pretty well and made it easy for us to get things done. Once we came up with the idea of a fundraiser to help spread awareness we really all came together to help reach our goals. This project taught me so much and really helped me connect with the climate change unit and just how much more we have to do to help the spread of malaria but as well as with my group.