I took a course titled Community Immersion in which I studied the for-profit, non-profit, and government sectors of my local community through the lens of systems thinking.  Throughout the class, we met many different people who played important roles in the community.  Many of them related to the health and well-being of the environment, which influenced my project. 

Visioning

Our class decided that, with systems thinking, we could reduce the amount of waste created at our school campus.  Because we were a new school, any waste reductions we made through strategic improvement projects in the first year would scale as the school grew.  We believed our impact could be significant in just over a few years.

We created a vision statement and project goal

We determined who our stakeholders were.  We then surveyed them to determine their commitment and interest in our possible projects.

Stakeholder Analysis

Survey

We determined which projects would have the greatest impact and desirability with the lowest effort/cost to implement.

My Leadership Role

I was responsible for getting Recycle Bins set up at our Upper School Campus. I started by mapping out all the steps of the project, estimating how long each step might take, and ordering the steps to ensure I completed the project on time. The result was a Gantt chart I could follow throughout the project.

Launching the Project

Before “launching” the project, I had to contact the City of Salisbury a numerous amount of times. I was continuously being ignored by them hoping that one day someone would reach out again to assist me. After multiple attempts, my principal provided me with Chris Tester’s email address who was the public works director for Salisbury, North Carolina. I emailed Mr. Tester requesting assistance, and he eventually responded and directed me to the public services department of Salisbury. After collecting more information and contacting more people, I was able to set up a recycle bin for our school!

The Results

At the end of the year my class again took measurements of the waste our school produced. Using similar sampling techniques to the baseline measurements, we found that we had reduced the amount of daily waste by 45%. The result of all the class' projects together allowed us to exceed our goal by 80%.

I also had to be a motivated student in a way that was very different than a typical class.  My project wasn't something my teacher designed. I designed the process and was fully responsible for its outcomes.  Although my classmates and teachers were willing to help, it was my motivation, organization, and effeciency that carried the project through.  There were times when I became very busy with other classes which drastically made the progress on this project slow down.  I am pleased with the progress I made and the fact that such a large project was able to be completed in a relatively short period of time.

Finally, I had to show resiliency.  There were times when I had to wait for responses to emails and calls. I had to be patient but not lose motivation. There were a couple people who simply didn't want to help me. I couldn't let it discourage me.  Instead, I kept pushing through knowing my work was important.