HOW TO ACE YOUR COMMUNITY PROJECT

The community project is a project that you have or will go through in MYP4. It is one of the first steps in being more independent in regards to your academic journey where you will have full liberty over how you want to contribute to the community. The community project can be approached in many manners, but one of the most important parts is choosing your main learning objectives and what you want to get out of this project, setting an ultimate goal. Examples of learning objectives could be in regards to being more vocal and navigating social media, learning how to collaborate in unison, informing yourself on more statistics of your topic, etc.

The community project gives you a lot of individuality, you are able to freely choose from many diverse fields and do what you enjoy. You can advocate for a persistent and relevant cause like BLM or LGBTQ+ rights, raise money and awareness for organizations that help animal shelters, donate to food shelters or books/resources to schools, etc. The list and possibilities are endless. It is of extreme importance to choose something that you are truly interested in as it will require a large amount of your attention across the span of a few months. It’s better to approach it as something you are excited to do, as opposed to a burden and a tedious school assignment. Not only do you need to choose a goal you are interested in, but also make sure that it is a smart goal.

We often hear this term in our daily lives whether if it’s when we are making our personal and academic goals or one in relation to an assessment in class. We regard it as a tedious process and wonder why we have to make these “useless” SMART goals but are they really useless? what are SMART goals after all? It is essential to follow this guideline in order to have a manageable process and to get to your desired end product. Once choosing your goal, you have to make sure that it is specific enough in order to make it attainable. If you want to “raise awareness about BLM”, you can make it more specific by “raising awareness about BLM on informative Instagram stories by talking about the unjust consequences protestors have to face and how it impacts them”. You also have to make sure that it’s attainable in order for you to be able to complete it in the given period of time. You don’t want to rush in the end because and not have work you are satisfied with. Lastly, you also have to make sure you stay on track and have your goal be relevant to the theme chosen, and make sure the actions you are taking are connected to the main idea. This will assure you chose a good topic and will help you throughout the entirety of the project.

Alongside having to choose a smart goal, you will be in groups of 3 which brings me to my next point of choosing someone you work well with. This decision is entirely up to you so who you choose is very important. It is essential to pick your friends or someone you know you can get along with, as communication is key. Although you must find a balance of both, as your closest friends may not work as the best team. This will be important when you decide how to split tasks amongst yourselves in order to save time and be more efficient. Not only that, but you must also choose people you know are responsible workers so that you don’t get behind on work as a collective. You want to make sure that your group collaborates together so that you don’t end up being the only one doing the work. Also choose people with similar interests to yours so that your learning objectives, products, and ideas don’t end up clashing and to make sure you don’t sacrifice too much of your original choices.

Once you have defined your goal and your group, it is crucial to have a plan on how you want to approach the project. This is in order to keep the progress of what you are doing and how you will spread your work out throughout the weeks. Whether it’s a table like shown below (information below used for example purposes) or a calendar, it is important you see what works best for you to stay organized and on track with specifics.

What?	When?	Evidence:
Contact organization
Make Instagram post
Sell the products

In addition to making a plan, it is important to record your evidence to show your supervisor how you are doing and can be used for your community project presentation. Adding the evidence as you do each step will facilitate your whole process.

When you begin your project, you will be assigned to a supervisor that will essentially follow your project and help you if needed. You will be able to schedule meetings with them in order to keep them up to date as they will put you on track if need be. Although the community project is an individual project where most, if not all, of the decisions, are up to you and your group, don’t be afraid to reach out to your supervisor if you are feeling a bit lost. They are there to help you and can aid the process in choosing an organization, making your product, etc.

It is essential to write in your community project entries. In accordance with the planner you can make in the beginning of your project, these entries will allow your supervisor to see what progress you have made. This also registers all the evidence and action you have been taking along the way and is a mandatory part of the project in itself.

The Community Project isn’t all that scary as some people make it out to be, and if done right, it will be an easy journey. The most important aspect is to have fun with it and to not have limitations on your creativity and what it is you can do! With a combination of organization, independence, and individuality, you will be able to create a meaningful and worthwhile project. Best of luck to the MYP4’s :)