Project
Serendipity
Syd Fox, Tawni Parrish, Keeley McIntyre
Academy of Arts, Careers, and Technology
380 Edison Way
Partnered with STEP2
INTRODUCTION
Hello!
We are Syd Fox, Tawni Parrish, and Keeley McIntyre, and we are students at the Academy of Arts, Careers, and Technology, as part of the Teaching and Training academy.
We partnered with STEP2, a comprehensive residential and out-patient treatment program that provides women struggling to overcome substance abuse disorders, poverty, domestic violence and/or sexual assault/trauma the opportunity to rebuild their lives. STEP2 is the only program in northern Nevada that allows women to maintain custody of their children while participating in treatment.
We decided to partner with this wonderful organization for our Junior Service Learning Project because our passions lie with Nevada's families.
WHY SERENDIPITY?
serendipity: the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.
We chose to call our JSLP "Project Serendipity" because we were provided a chance to use our passions in a way that is beneficial to our community, our school, and ourselves.
Project Serendipity has proven to us that along with being an effective and cohesive team, we also have the ability to problem solve beyond the classroom.
We faced trials and tribulations as we worked toward the implementation of this project, teaching us valuable workplace skills and problem solving techniques.
Each issue we encountered was simply an event by chance that eventually impacted us in a happy or beneficial way.
OBJECTIVES
Our objective is to teach a workshop to mothers at STEP2 about child development/care.
We will provide credible information and useful resources in our presentation to the mothers.
After all, it takes a village.
While the main focus of our project is to teach a workshop, we also want to collect donations.
We aimed to collect:
10 binders
10 reusable waterbottles
10 packs of pencils
10 reams of paper
We received over 176 donations within a 3 week period:
75 water bottles
77 binders
1 bag
13 packs of pencils
2 packs of glue sticks
8 packs of paper
COMMUNITY IMPACT
Project Serendipity impacted the community by presenting a workshop we created to mothers in need in the community. Development and care of children early on is incredibly important to lifelong success, health, and happiness. We provided a list of types of schools in Nevada and the contact information for these schools, as well as resources to track children’s milestones and important developmental stages.
Project Serendipity also collected donations of requested items for two weeks, and collected 176 donations for STEP2 Reno.
Following the presentation of our lesson, we provided evaluations to the women of STEP2 Reno about how we did as a group. Of the women in attendance, 100% rated Project Serendipity a 5/5 on quality of workshop, and 100% wrote that they took knowledge away from this workshop.
SCHOOL IMPACT
Project Serendipity is involving our school, The Academy of Arts, Careers, and Technology, by placing fliers with donation information around the school building, so students have the opportunity to donate needed supplies and materials to STEP2. We have placed bins for donation collection in teachers' classrooms and students are encouraged to donate by teachers and peers. All proceeds and donated supplies went directly to STEP2.
FCCLA
Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA), is a nonprofit national CTSO for students in Family and Consumer Sciences education. FCCLA is the only national CTSO with the family and societal improvement as its central focus.
Tawni and Keeley took Project Serendipity to FCCLA in February of 2019 in the category of Community Service. They placed 1st Silver as the highest scoring competitors in their category.
PUBLICITY
Fliers such as the one displayed below were used for publicity inside AACT to inform students. These fliers were posted and shared on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, as well as all over the school and in various locations in the community. In fact, a community member saw the post on Instagram and Facebook and reached out with a generous donation of 30 binders.
LETTERS OF RECOGNITION
Following the completion of our workshop, Project Serendipity had requested a letter of recognition from our incredible community partner, Shannon Jensen at STEP2 Reno, who has worked tirelessly to aid us in the implementation of this project.
ARTIFACTS
Donation Collection
After only 2 days of collecting donations, Project Serendipity received an outstanding number of supplies.
After 2 weeks of collecting donations, Project Serendipity was able to collect 176 donations!
We collected donations in our school and around the community. Our publicity proved successful when we were approached by many donors who heard of Project Serendipity through social media posts.
Workshop Implementation
During implementation of our workshop, we had two engaging, fun activities! We made DIY Lava Lamps and Play dough with cheap kitchen essentials, to show that open-ended toys don’t have to be expensive or hard to find!
We also created a blank timeline and provided sticky notes to each of the women in attendance. We asked them to write any important milestones a person may have in their life, and asked them to place it along the timeline where they believed a person reached that milestone. This activity prompted interesting discussion and insight.
FCCLA
Tawni and Keeley took Project Serendipity to FCCLA and placed first!