Project Description
We have been working a lot with Hawaii Animal Rescue Foundation (HARF) in community engagement this semester. In this project all of the students taking the community engagement class had to work on a project for HARF. My group worked on editing the humane education page on HARF's website. In addition to editing the page, we has to create a project draft (an idea for what the website page would look like once it was edited) present our ideas to Dawn, HARF's CEO.
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What are you most proud of from this assignment?
I am proud of how our group worked together to get past some of the organizational challenges that we had with this project. Even though we had trouble figuring out what we were supposed to work on in the beginning, we were able to come up with an idea for a useful final product in the end.
What 21st Century Skills does this project address?
I think that this project addresses civic literacy and engagement skills. By providing Hawaii's animals with a proper home, HARF makes a big impact on our community. One of HARF's missions is to educate everyone on the island about the humane treatment of animals and animal safety. HARF has many education programs that most schools do not know about. By modifying their humane education website, we are making information about their programs more accessible. Our group wants to support humane education on the island because it has an impact the safety of people and animals in our community.
How did you develop and/or improve upon your 21st Century Skills with this assignment?
I think that I developed my civil literacy and engagement skills.by working with my group to come up with a project that would be meaningful and useful to HARF. We had to work with the organization closely in order to figure out how we could help them achieve their goals. Since there were already many groups working on projects for the organization, we had trouble finding something else for us to work on. Our group had to use civil literacy and engagement skills to work with an organization in our local community.
What was most difficult about completing this task?
Figuring out what was wanted for our final product was the most challenging part of completing this assignment. The instructions for this project were very loose, so we had to be creative and work with members of the HARF organization to find out exactly what they wanted from our project.
How could I improve this project?
I think that I could improve this project by rehearsing my presentation before our group had a presentation with Dawn. I think that our project could have been presented to her in a more professional way. We also had a lot of questions about what she thought about our project idea, but we did not include those questions in our presentation agenda. I think that we would have had a more productive meeting if we prepared the questions we were going to ask instead of going off memory.
How does this relate to what you have learned in the past?
This project relates to the work we have done with HARF in the past. Before staring our project we learned about the organization and their mission. Some presenters from HARF also spoke to our class about the challenges they were having with the organization and their goals for the future.
How can you apply this to future learning?
I think that my experience with this project will help me as I work more with local organizations. Next school year, I will have to do a junior project that will have a positive impact on others. I also want to continue to work with local organizations and help my community after I finish my junior project.