A Passion For Service
Students present community projects SCIA eighth graders presentations were impressive
More than 90 International Baccalaureate community projects by Summit Charter Intermediate Academy 8th graders were presented to peers, parents and school administrators on Thursday evening.
Students picked their projects by finding what they were passionate about, and worked on them since October 2022, said their teacher and mentor Jenifer Saunders.
“I’m really proud of the hard work our students did especially connecting the projects to their passions,” she said.
She spoke about one young girl reading to second graders. There was another 8th grade student, Jacob Carrillo, who helped tutor 6th grade students and helped solve their math problems. Damon Ascensio’s project A Neighbor in Need, was a Christmas Charity Drive. He collected donations and his family made and gave out tamales to people in need at Christmas time.
Evalyn Bahena learned about Helping the Bees, by creating a food habitat or garden to help them survive. She wrote bees help pollinate all of the trees, fruits, flowers, and flowering vegetables in the fields all over the world.
There was a project about Fentanyl Awareness that was well done by Eldric Flores, and Ryan Lopez did a great presentation using a bright blue background to simulate a computer screen to present Helping
the Elderly with Technology. He taught his grandparents to use the computer and the ipad. An excellent presentation that was easy to read and it was concise.
All of the student projects helped people in the community better their lives, be it firefighters, veterans, farm workers, or the homeless, or children in school, to name a few.
Many projects aimed to help with social ills;
like fentanyl and drug use, helping abused children, helping homeless people, homeless pets, or animal abuse, and again helping veterans.
Xadan Garcia and Anthony Trujillo collected and delivered hygiene products to people at a shelter in Porterville.
One project by Hayden Miller collected donations of beanie hats, blankets, t-shirts, and socks for veterans outside of Target and Walmart in Porterville. In two weeks they had a large donation, explained Miller and he and his family collected it, packaged it, and sent it to Operation Dignity via UPS. Miller said he and his family would continue this project. One man who viewed the project thanked Hayden for his generosity.
There were the top 10 Community Projects which were marvelous.
One of the top projects was The Magic of Music by Zoey Say who has been playing the cello for 4 years. Her project was well done and clearly explained.
She received an SCIA Certificate for the project. She listed the many benefits to music: heart health, elevated mood, stress reduction, heightened endurance, memory, enhanced coordination, increased mathematical ability, and sharper concentration.
Say said, “It was really nice to see the Porterville music community and help them grow.”
Another of the projects was Christmas Drive for Veterans which was well done. As well as another about recycling.
There were so many great projects it must have been really difficult to pick them.
All the projects were interesting and all the students did a great job.