'Aiea High School GEER Final Report

Briefly describe the status of your project (one paragraph).
PVH offers free vision screening to all students attending a Title I school in our state. VTL partners with PVH and offers free vision exams to students who are identified through the screening and free glasses if needed

1. A majority of the student body was tested within three days. 
2. Some students were not aware they are visually impaire; they now realize the importance of annual exams. 
3. The vision testing was conducted by student volunteers and learned how to operate the required equipment. 
4. Some students qualified for further referral and may receive free glasses when rechecked by a doctor.

1. Parents can sign an opt out form so their child's information will not be shared with these organizations. 
2. All students must be given an opportunity to be screened 
3. There were actually students who did not realize they had difficulties with their vision. 1 
4. It was surprising to find that the organization could screen students extremely quickly. The volume of students they went through in such a short span of time was very surprising. I was also surprised to see that most students present for the screening were actually engaged in the process and doing what the volunteers asked. These were pleasant surprises that made the event run much more smoothly. 

PART IB:  PROJECT WITH SMALL BUSINESS OR NON-PROFIT IN THE COMMUNITY  

Briefly describe the status of your project (one paragraph).
The purpose of this project is to monitor COVID-19 cases on our campus through screening and surveillance of volunteers at our school. This project is run by three seniors in the health sciences pathway who are demonstrating the importance of surveillance, especially amidst a pandemic. These students offer complimentary COVID-19 testing in MPB2 every Tuesday during lunch and monitor the number of individuals tested at our school each week, with an eventual goal of testing 100 individuals per month (approximately 10% of our school population).

List down at least three successes (what worked well).
One part which has worked well was the promotion of an incentive for individuals who get tested. The students decided to offer a raffle prize so each time a person comes to get tested (once per week maximum), their name will be entered into a raffle drawing for a prize. With this promotion, the number of students tested doubled from what it was previously. Another success has been allowing students to get tested during class time. Prior to when this was offered, the number of tests was under 10 on a testing day. Since then, though, this has increased to a minimum of 20 samples each testing day. Lastly, the promotion of this project by the students has been successful. With these students asking teachers to get tested in order to help their project, staff at the school are much more willing to do so than they were previously. Once teachers know this is to help students, many of them are more than happy to assist any way they can.

One surprise was the number of teachers who came to get tested after the students presented their project during a faculty meeting. Lunch is one of the few times during the day when teachers are available, and seeing them sacrifice this time to help the seniors was substantial. Another surprise was the ease of instructing individuals on how to test themselves. Many people who were asked to get tested had done so elsewhere and did not enjoy the experience; however, with the instructions of the students coordinating this project, more individuals felt comfortable testing than did previously. 

The goal of the American Heart Challenge (sponsored by the American Heart Association) is to promote a healthy lifestyle for children and teenagers by encouraging them to sign up for "the pledge". This year, the pledge of the American Heart Challenge involved three components: getting 8 hours of sleep per night, exercising for at least 1 hour per day, and spreading kindness. Students register for the pledge by promising to follow one of these goals and are also encouraged by activities organized on campus by the student facilitators of this project.

1. Over 150 students registered for the pledge by the end of the event. This allowed us to promote heart-healthy activities to more individuals on campus. 
2. In the events on campus, over 300 students participated in total. 
3. The student facilitators for this project were able to adapt over the 3-week span of this project and modified their plans to better reach their goal.

Something surprising from this project was the number of students who participated in the events relating to the American Heart Challenge. Several components of this project, like the Hearts 4 U campaign (where students wrote heartfelt messages to one another to promote kindness) and the Lunge Walkway (where students lunged or did jumping jacks to promote exercise) were very well received and had many participants who did not or had not yet taken the pledge. It was exciting to see so many students participating in these heart-healthy events and encouraging their classmates to do the same.
List down at least two challenges or issues that you have had so far. 

The original goal of this project was to have 500 students register for the pledge by the end of the event. While this goal was not met, the student facilitators modified their approach to registration to make the process more streamlined. This allowed them to increase the number of students registered by 100 in a short 1-week span of time. Another challenge of this project was helping the student facilitators adjust to unexpected outcomes. None of the students running this project had experience facilitating something on a school-wide scale before, so they felt discouraged at times when things didn't run exactly as they had planned. It took encouragement and support from myself and their classmates to help these facilitators learn what to adjust in their project to be successful, which the students were eventually able to do.