Charity Fair Project Blog 12/13/17

About the Project

Every year, adventure hosts a charity fair, in which the students select a charity and then sell products that relate to the cause and the charity. During this project, there are many assignments that are required for each class. For example, in history, we did research on our charity and in electives, we created our how-to. Each group presents and the top group from each class then continues to finals, where they present to Student Council, and the best presentation is chosen.

Summary:

During the charity fair project, I learned a lot about my charity and the problem that it is attempting to address. Our charity was Water For South Sudan. The problem that this charity is trying to address is that there are so many people in South Sudan that do not have access to clean and drinkable water. This is also a problem because, in South Sudan, millions of women and children walk for up to eight hours a day to collect water from harsh and unsafe environments, but even that water can be contaminated with parasites and bacteria. The results are sickness, even death. Salva Dut, who founded this charity was forced to flee to Ethiopia at 11 years old because of civil war and he became a leader of 1500 lost boys. After he relocated to the US, he found his father in Sudan, sick with a water-borne disease.

Backward-Looking

Have you done a similar kind of work in the past (earlier in the year or in a previous grade; in school or out of school)?

We have done a similar kind of work in the past because the charity fair is an annual tradition at AdVENTURE. However, the process and presentation of charity fair have been a little different the past few years. Of course, we change our charity and the product that we sell as well, so every year, charity fair has a different feeling and process. I have done charity fair for three years now, and each year we do our presentations and classwork a little bit differently. For example, in 2016, each grade level had an assigned area in which their charity had to have their headquarters or work in general, and in 2017, the seventh and eighth graders were required to have a product that relates to their charity. Some of the factors of charity fair that have stayed the same all three years I have been here at AdVENTURE are the fact that there is a specific charity fair assignment in each class. This is good so that each subject has a different point of view on the assignments.

Inward-Looking

How do you feel about this piece of work? What parts of it do you particularly like? Dislike? Why? What did/do you enjoy about this piece or work?

I feel good about this piece of work because we took time and full effort on completing all of the assignments on time and to our best effort. I particularly like how we showed the carbon footprint using the map because it is good to be able to see the carbon dioxide emissions visually. I also liked the carbon footprint because we took a lot of time and effort on it. I disliked how charity fair was mixed in with other various projects, so we were very busy and it was stressing because there were so many assignments to complete.

Outward-Looking

Did you do your work the way other people did theirs? In what ways did you do it differently? In what ways was your work or process similar?

We did do our work the same way that other people did theirs in the way that we followed the same process and we had the same assignments to complete. Our work was different to other teams because we all had different charities and products, which meant our presentations were also very different and had a different purpose. Our trifolds were also very different because each group had different information to put on their backboard, and they could decide however they wanted to organize it so that it was easy to read.

Forward-Looking

What would you change if you had a chance to do this piece over again?

If I had a chance to do this piece over again, I would start creating our product earlier so that we could make more so that we did not sell as fast, and we would make more money towards our charity. I would also sell our items for a slightly higher price because they took a lot of time and materials to create. If I had a chance to do this piece over again, I would also make our how-to more detailed so that it is easier to follow and understand.