The issue that we wanted to address was the lack of knowledge about our own community. Osceola county is fairly divided and many of the students at our school are not exposed to the issues of the community. Many students also are not aware of the different problems that members within their community are confronted with.
In order to address this issue, our Roots and Shoots group conducted a Community Icebreaker. Within this activity, students were given the opportunity to identify a social, environmental, or animal problem. When they identified the problem, they were told to create or \"brainstorm\" a solution. With many people of various cultures that live within different parts of the community, this project allowed numerous students to immerse themselves in other cultures and issues within our community.
Our project went exceptionally well! Firstly, the group was required to make posters to place the issues and their approaches. The picture or the background picture can see this. After that, the students worked in rotation, addressing, and brainstorming solutions to a problem within our community. Many students wanted to tackle environmental or social issues within our community. Lastly, all students are required to take a survey, deciding on an official community project for March.
Throughout this project, we all learned a lot more about our community. Not only were we introduced to different issues such as the lack of sexual education, or the increase in the number of stray cats, but we also added to different solutions and how they can influence our community. This project also allowed me to explore the dynamic of our Roots and Shoots group, and identify that there is a large pull towards addressing social and environmental issues (recycling, education, awareness, bullying, etc.), within our community.
If I conducted this project at our Roots and Shoots group again, as I plan for every school year, I would make sure that people give more realistic solutions. I would also try to engage the students more by focusing on and researching more local dilemmas within our community, rather than large general ones. Although we had a large number of local ideas introduced to the group, there were global solutions, that would be harder to obtain.
My favorite part of this project was the aftermath. When the project was completed, many students were inspired to act on those issues. Not only were they engaged in the activity, but they are excited to choose a project and become more immersed and involved with their community.
It is important to get members within your community engaged! A substantial limitation of my project was the minimal people that participated (12). With more people, who care about the topic and making a change in the world, your community and peers will be exposed to many more issues and problems with realistic solutions in our community.
