Capstone Project Reflection

    Today, on May 12th, 2022, Sydney and I had the opportunity to present our capstone presentation, which summed up months of collaboration with the Kid's Program in one final moment. 

We were fortunate enough to be able to collaborate with the Kid's Program and Manara Center during the planning and writing of our grant proposal. To summarize our grant, we were funded $4999 for the programmatic expansion of the Kids Program, and the implementation of a 3-month summer program for child development and trauma recovery. Over the past few months, we have formed a beautiful connection with the program and everyone involved. The Kid's Program has various programs, but one of the most loved amongst the children is the Visual Arts Program. For our capstone project, we wanted to share their artwork with the Poly community through a visual interactive art gallery. The prompt was open-ended so they had the opportunity to create anything that their heart desired. 

Our presentation, which took place in the Upper School Library, was a culmination of the work we did for our Grant proposal and a display of the art gallery that we made through a website called Art steps. When I first started with the Global Scholars Program, one of the aspects that I was most intimidated by was the Capstone project. After watching so many impressive and inspiring presentations from my fellow Global Scholars in the past and present, it felt like a difficult act to follow. However, as soon as we started presenting, all of the nerves disappeared since we got to share this project that we are so passionate about with the Poly community. 

At the end of our presentation, we were asked "How do you intend on continuing this project after this is all over?" In simple terms, we hope to continue expanding this project further and further. We plan on staying in touch with the Manara Center, and even though this has not yet been taken into action yet due to time zone differences, it would be an incredible opportunity to individually meet the children in the Kids Program, even through Zoom. I went into this experience with a positive mindset, but I left with future ideas to expand this project beyond Poly.