The 20% Project
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February 26th
The 20% Project begins! Our 3rd project of the year is an exciting, student-driven project. Lily and I have partnered up to focus on something we are very passionate about; the lack of youth involvement in the political system. I find it appalling that the younger generations are so apathetic towards the very thing that America is based on. It is our goal to target 16-21 year olds and impress upon them the importance of voting and even more so being an informed voter. I'm very excited to do this project because it is on Lily and I to create something powerful and lasting. The fact that we may fail at any point in this project is sort of exhilarating and freeing. If we do fail, which we may, I wont be sad. This topic is so interesting and real and the things I learn about politics and voting and reaching out to youth is something I will continue to use throughout my life. I whole-heatedly believe in what Lily and I are trying to achieve, LET'S DO THIS!
The 20% Project begins! Our 3rd project of the year is an exciting, student-driven project. Lily and I have partnered up to focus on something we are very passionate about; the lack of youth involvement in the political system. I find it appalling that the younger generations are so apathetic towards the very thing that America is based on. It is our goal to target 16-21 year olds and impress upon them the importance of voting and even more so being an informed voter. I'm very excited to do this project because it is on Lily and I to create something powerful and lasting. The fact that we may fail at any point in this project is sort of exhilarating and freeing. If we do fail, which we may, I wont be sad. This topic is so interesting and real and the things I learn about politics and voting and reaching out to youth is something I will continue to use throughout my life. I whole-heatedly believe in what Lily and I are trying to achieve, LET'S DO THIS!
March 4th
After the first week of the 20% Project, I’ve realized that this project is going to test us in the best ways. It turns out that designing a project completely on your own is actually incredibly hard and demanding. It has definitely given me a new appreciation for teachers. This week we worked out our Project Proposal. This has helped us create a clearer vision for our project and what we think we can realistically accomplish in the time we have. After, we created a Survey with questions for ‘Under 18 year olds’ and ‘18+ year olds’. The survey asks about their opinion of voting, weather they are planning on voting, if they are registered, and their overall awareness of political issues.
At the beginning of this week we emailed an organization called Rock the Vote. This organization is all about getting youth involved in the political process and most of all getting them to VOTE! in the coming Presidential election. In our email we asked if they had any successful projects or products they've used that we could adopt or if we could help in one of their projects or if they just had a few tips for us. The response that they give us will largely impact the direction of our project and even our product. Unfortunately, they have not responded yet so we are at a bit of a standstill. We hope that by Monday they will respond. But, if they don’t, we may have to forget about them and move onto our next order of business, Voter Registration booths!
March 8th
This week we went up to the college on Monday for a pointless Career Fair so we’ve only had Tuesday and part of Wednesday to work. On Tuesday, Lily and I had a meeting with Stephen because we were feeling less inspired and fairly unclear on what our next step was. Stephen had some really helpful words of wisdom. He talked about the importance of honing in on a specific aspect of youth in politics because based on where we take it, our end product and research will be very specific to the direction we take. We also spoke about what makes social entrepreneurship successful. Lily and I left the meeting with a renewed spunk and a bit more clarity on what to do. We spent the remainder of class nailing down our question. We decided to create a broad question, ‘How can we get the youth of Durango more involved in the political process?’. We then created more specific question to go along with it;
This week we went up to the college on Monday for a pointless Career Fair so we’ve only had Tuesday and part of Wednesday to work. On Tuesday, Lily and I had a meeting with Stephen because we were feeling less inspired and fairly unclear on what our next step was. Stephen had some really helpful words of wisdom. He talked about the importance of honing in on a specific aspect of youth in politics because based on where we take it, our end product and research will be very specific to the direction we take. We also spoke about what makes social entrepreneurship successful. Lily and I left the meeting with a renewed spunk and a bit more clarity on what to do. We spent the remainder of class nailing down our question. We decided to create a broad question, ‘How can we get the youth of Durango more involved in the political process?’. We then created more specific question to go along with it;
- How can we decrease youth’s apathy towards politics?
- Why don’t youth involve themselves in the political system/voting?
- What issues make youth want to vote?
March 16th
Day 12 of the 20% Project. These 12 days have been a really interesting learning process for me, both educationally and personally. We’ve been heavily researching youth apathy as well as other aspects of the political system. We,ve learned about voting demographics in the United States. Out of our total Voting Age Population, only 54.7% vote. 54.7%! With only half of our country voting, we can hardly call America a democracy. Throughout history, youth are continuously the smallest group of voters even though they make up roughly 20% of eligible voters in the United States. We’ve read many articles about why youth seem so uninterested in voting. Many have said that they are so frustrated with our political system, all parts of it. The establishment, the lack of actual problem solving. Essentially they believe our system is broken, and maybe it is. They’ve lost faith in the political process. I learned about some of the systems that contribute to this unenthused feeling, the Electoral College and Citizen's United. The Electoral College, although created with good intention, is something that allows a certain few states to essentially controls who wins. Then, Citizens United, an incredibly flawed concept, allows companies or extremely rich individuals to contribute to campaigns anonymously. It essentially allows the really wealthy to buy elections, totally outrageous.
Last week we found our mentor, Darren White. He is an avid democrat and is devoted to the political process. He gave us a training on voter registration and now Lily and I are officially able to register people! We have nailed down the dates for our Voter Registration Booths and are excited to see how they work out! We are pretty much done with our research and are moving into the creation of pamphlets as well as our Social Media Campaign.
Day 12 of the 20% Project. These 12 days have been a really interesting learning process for me, both educationally and personally. We’ve been heavily researching youth apathy as well as other aspects of the political system. We,ve learned about voting demographics in the United States. Out of our total Voting Age Population, only 54.7% vote. 54.7%! With only half of our country voting, we can hardly call America a democracy. Throughout history, youth are continuously the smallest group of voters even though they make up roughly 20% of eligible voters in the United States. We’ve read many articles about why youth seem so uninterested in voting. Many have said that they are so frustrated with our political system, all parts of it. The establishment, the lack of actual problem solving. Essentially they believe our system is broken, and maybe it is. They’ve lost faith in the political process. I learned about some of the systems that contribute to this unenthused feeling, the Electoral College and Citizen's United. The Electoral College, although created with good intention, is something that allows a certain few states to essentially controls who wins. Then, Citizens United, an incredibly flawed concept, allows companies or extremely rich individuals to contribute to campaigns anonymously. It essentially allows the really wealthy to buy elections, totally outrageous.
Last week we found our mentor, Darren White. He is an avid democrat and is devoted to the political process. He gave us a training on voter registration and now Lily and I are officially able to register people! We have nailed down the dates for our Voter Registration Booths and are excited to see how they work out! We are pretty much done with our research and are moving into the creation of pamphlets as well as our Social Media Campaign.
http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/demographics
March 23rd
The first gallery walk of the 20% Project was held today. It was really interesting to hear myself give the pitch over and over and watch the reactions of the people listening. I had some typical forced conversations that are always brought about by forced viewing of a project (typically with the freshmen). However, others lit up a bit, their eyes got that little flame of passion in it that made my fire burn a bit brighter in response. It was so cool to see how many people are interested in this topic that is so prevalent in the USA. This is an issue that everyone acknowledges and I think people thought of it as refreshing that someone was actually addressing it and attempting to change it, especially people that are from the age group. One comment that I found so interesting was said by Sara Price, she said “I’m political. I’m going through the motions,like the caucus, but even I'm apathetic.” That really spoke to me because it shows that our political system is so incredibly broken, not only the youth are feeling this frustration. Apathy towards the political process is something very real and not only to young people.
As with every gallery walk, we received a lot of, however sweet, empty comments. But, we also got some specific and helpful comments. One person said that we should create some sort of video to hype people up on voting for a specific candidate. I was thinking about this and because we want to keep this more about just voting, not voting for one specific person, I chose against that. Instead, that did give us an idea to possibly create a hype video about voting in general. Another person suggested that we hold a mini vote at the school to see which candidates Animas is leaning towards. This could be really fun to sort of give all students, even the ones that cant vote legally, an experience of voting. However, Lily and I aren't really sure if this could get too messy and biased so we aren't sure if we will do that yet.
Although Lily and I were gone Friday and Monday, we have still made good progress. We are currently in the process of creating the pamphlets. Creating the design has been hard because photoshop is no longer accessible on my computer and using Lily’s was too hard (we are both a little technologically stupid when it comes to Photoshop) so we actually decided to use Microsoft Word. In our pamphlet we are going to give the stances of; Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Ted Cruz. We will give their stances on; Health Care,Education, Environment/Energy, Crime, and Abortion. We are creating these to help young people, whether they are old enough to vote or not, the resources to form their own, informed opinions on the candidates. We feel these issues really do speak to youth and are very real in this election. Except for the fact that the printer is printing one side of our pamphlet upside down, we haven’t run into many problems lately. Our next step is to research each candidate's stance on these issues and begin our social media campaign. The stoke is definitely renewed from the gallery walk today...BABY LET’S VOTE!
The first gallery walk of the 20% Project was held today. It was really interesting to hear myself give the pitch over and over and watch the reactions of the people listening. I had some typical forced conversations that are always brought about by forced viewing of a project (typically with the freshmen). However, others lit up a bit, their eyes got that little flame of passion in it that made my fire burn a bit brighter in response. It was so cool to see how many people are interested in this topic that is so prevalent in the USA. This is an issue that everyone acknowledges and I think people thought of it as refreshing that someone was actually addressing it and attempting to change it, especially people that are from the age group. One comment that I found so interesting was said by Sara Price, she said “I’m political. I’m going through the motions,like the caucus, but even I'm apathetic.” That really spoke to me because it shows that our political system is so incredibly broken, not only the youth are feeling this frustration. Apathy towards the political process is something very real and not only to young people.
As with every gallery walk, we received a lot of, however sweet, empty comments. But, we also got some specific and helpful comments. One person said that we should create some sort of video to hype people up on voting for a specific candidate. I was thinking about this and because we want to keep this more about just voting, not voting for one specific person, I chose against that. Instead, that did give us an idea to possibly create a hype video about voting in general. Another person suggested that we hold a mini vote at the school to see which candidates Animas is leaning towards. This could be really fun to sort of give all students, even the ones that cant vote legally, an experience of voting. However, Lily and I aren't really sure if this could get too messy and biased so we aren't sure if we will do that yet.
Although Lily and I were gone Friday and Monday, we have still made good progress. We are currently in the process of creating the pamphlets. Creating the design has been hard because photoshop is no longer accessible on my computer and using Lily’s was too hard (we are both a little technologically stupid when it comes to Photoshop) so we actually decided to use Microsoft Word. In our pamphlet we are going to give the stances of; Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Ted Cruz. We will give their stances on; Health Care,Education, Environment/Energy, Crime, and Abortion. We are creating these to help young people, whether they are old enough to vote or not, the resources to form their own, informed opinions on the candidates. We feel these issues really do speak to youth and are very real in this election. Except for the fact that the printer is printing one side of our pamphlet upside down, we haven’t run into many problems lately. Our next step is to research each candidate's stance on these issues and begin our social media campaign. The stoke is definitely renewed from the gallery walk today...BABY LET’S VOTE!
April 8th:
This has been a really exciting couple weeks for our 20% Project. We have created our pamphlet..oh the joy we felt when it was done! I originally created our pamphlet using Microsoft Word but as we continued, we realized that Photoshop would allow us more freedom with what we could do to text and pictures. The struggles of using Photoshop were a daily occurrence that created a lot of stress and even some aggression. But in the end, the pamphlet looked great and is a solid, unbiased resource for young voters. It was fascinating to learn exactly what the candidates’ stances were and what they agreed and disagreed with. For example, Clinton and Sanders both believe Abortion is a woman's unrestricted right while Cruz and Trump both believe it is immoral. Another thing that the democrats agree on is that climate change is real and green energy needs to become a serious priority in the USA. The Republicans, much to my disbelief and anger, do not believe climate change is real. One similarity between all the candidates is that all of them believe Marijuana is not a gateway drug. Sanders, Clinton, and Cruz all oppose stricter drug laws while Trump has not stated a clear position on drugs other than weed is not a gateway drug. Having all this information so easily accessible for young people will hopefully encourage them to be more aware.
After our pamphlets were done, it was time for our VOTER REGISTRATION BOOTH! We set up the table in the parking lot, it was a beautiful day, sunny and there was little wind. Darren, our mentor, showed up with the registering sheets and a grin on his face. We taped some red and blue stars to the front of the table along with a sign, ‘Voter Registration!’ with a 16+ circled at the top. Our final addition to the table, the pamphlets, and we were off! The 45 minutes that followed were filled with shouting from us to passers by with their full name, ‘Jake Beekman! Are you registered to vote?!!’ And then their excitement as they looked at their license while writing down the numbers on the page. It was so exciting to watch people proudly hand their completed forms to us. We talked with lots of students about the importance of pre registering, although some kids were very rude about the idea of registering so early. That was frustrating but we really worked on trying to impress upon them the convenience of just registering now. One of my favorite parts was how incredibly impressed and stoked our mentor was. His grin seemed to grow and grow. He excitedly told us that he’d been wanting to do this sort of thing since 2013 and we were the first people in Durango to do this. He couldn't stop expressing how impressed he was by Animas High School and that, because of this Voter drive, he wanted his son to come to Animas. As we ended our first day and started packing up he told us this was the happiest he’d been in a very long time. The most powerful comment he said was ‘Because of this, my hope in the future generation is restored.’ It was so incredible to see the joy that this Voter Registration Booth brought to just about everyone that participated. In total we registered 33 people to vote, and considering that all freshmen and some sophomores aren't even old enough to register, that's quite a bit of the people that were able to! This experience alone made this project a success for me. It’s so empowering to make an impact, even if it’s not huge.
From here, we are debating if we should set up a booth at DHS and/or Fort Lewis College. One thing is for sure, Darren is really really hoping we decide to do it. As of right now, we’re really focusing on our Twitter campaign, following all the candidates and all major political news accounts. With only 6 days left, I hope to finish this project out really strong and maybe even with another Voter Registration Booth!
This has been a really exciting couple weeks for our 20% Project. We have created our pamphlet..oh the joy we felt when it was done! I originally created our pamphlet using Microsoft Word but as we continued, we realized that Photoshop would allow us more freedom with what we could do to text and pictures. The struggles of using Photoshop were a daily occurrence that created a lot of stress and even some aggression. But in the end, the pamphlet looked great and is a solid, unbiased resource for young voters. It was fascinating to learn exactly what the candidates’ stances were and what they agreed and disagreed with. For example, Clinton and Sanders both believe Abortion is a woman's unrestricted right while Cruz and Trump both believe it is immoral. Another thing that the democrats agree on is that climate change is real and green energy needs to become a serious priority in the USA. The Republicans, much to my disbelief and anger, do not believe climate change is real. One similarity between all the candidates is that all of them believe Marijuana is not a gateway drug. Sanders, Clinton, and Cruz all oppose stricter drug laws while Trump has not stated a clear position on drugs other than weed is not a gateway drug. Having all this information so easily accessible for young people will hopefully encourage them to be more aware.
After our pamphlets were done, it was time for our VOTER REGISTRATION BOOTH! We set up the table in the parking lot, it was a beautiful day, sunny and there was little wind. Darren, our mentor, showed up with the registering sheets and a grin on his face. We taped some red and blue stars to the front of the table along with a sign, ‘Voter Registration!’ with a 16+ circled at the top. Our final addition to the table, the pamphlets, and we were off! The 45 minutes that followed were filled with shouting from us to passers by with their full name, ‘Jake Beekman! Are you registered to vote?!!’ And then their excitement as they looked at their license while writing down the numbers on the page. It was so exciting to watch people proudly hand their completed forms to us. We talked with lots of students about the importance of pre registering, although some kids were very rude about the idea of registering so early. That was frustrating but we really worked on trying to impress upon them the convenience of just registering now. One of my favorite parts was how incredibly impressed and stoked our mentor was. His grin seemed to grow and grow. He excitedly told us that he’d been wanting to do this sort of thing since 2013 and we were the first people in Durango to do this. He couldn't stop expressing how impressed he was by Animas High School and that, because of this Voter drive, he wanted his son to come to Animas. As we ended our first day and started packing up he told us this was the happiest he’d been in a very long time. The most powerful comment he said was ‘Because of this, my hope in the future generation is restored.’ It was so incredible to see the joy that this Voter Registration Booth brought to just about everyone that participated. In total we registered 33 people to vote, and considering that all freshmen and some sophomores aren't even old enough to register, that's quite a bit of the people that were able to! This experience alone made this project a success for me. It’s so empowering to make an impact, even if it’s not huge.
From here, we are debating if we should set up a booth at DHS and/or Fort Lewis College. One thing is for sure, Darren is really really hoping we decide to do it. As of right now, we’re really focusing on our Twitter campaign, following all the candidates and all major political news accounts. With only 6 days left, I hope to finish this project out really strong and maybe even with another Voter Registration Booth!
April 18th:
On Thursday, I shot out an email to a woman at Fort Lewis College and the sponsor of Student Council at Durango High School inquiring about setting up Voter Registration Booths at both locations. Much to our disappointment, we have not heard back from either source. Even though this is the last official day of the 20% Project, if they do respond to us before school is over with the go ahead, I’d be very willing to have another one.
On Friday, we began to create our TED Talk. We want our talk to be concise but very powerful. We want to really convey the research we’ve done since we haven't created a platform to share it before this. We want to leave every person in the audience wanting to register to vote, or become involved, or actually vote this November . My biggest hope for this talk, like many of the best TED Talks I’ve watched, is to have the audience leave feeling inspired. Feeling inspired about the power that they hold because of our democracy, inspired that they have the ability to be as informed as a grown adult, inspired to be a better citizen.
As far as earning, I wouldn't say I’ve learned a lot of new content since this past week has been about referring to the things I’ve already learned. However, I’ve learned a bit about what makes a good TED Talk. I’ve watched and listened to about 10 since we’ve been creating ours and I’ve noticed a few similarities. The first, they involve some sort of humor, a key thing that keeps you engaged. The next, their slides or visual elements relate exactly to what they are saying. They don’t have confusing, irrelevant pictures behind them. The third is that they have a powerful conclusion that typically brings it back to the audience, making the audience members ask themselves some sort of question or reflect on their own life. Finally, they somehow leave you thinking about something in a different way, if only for a while, it stays with you. I am hoping that our TED Talk involves all of these aspects.
On Thursday, I shot out an email to a woman at Fort Lewis College and the sponsor of Student Council at Durango High School inquiring about setting up Voter Registration Booths at both locations. Much to our disappointment, we have not heard back from either source. Even though this is the last official day of the 20% Project, if they do respond to us before school is over with the go ahead, I’d be very willing to have another one.
On Friday, we began to create our TED Talk. We want our talk to be concise but very powerful. We want to really convey the research we’ve done since we haven't created a platform to share it before this. We want to leave every person in the audience wanting to register to vote, or become involved, or actually vote this November . My biggest hope for this talk, like many of the best TED Talks I’ve watched, is to have the audience leave feeling inspired. Feeling inspired about the power that they hold because of our democracy, inspired that they have the ability to be as informed as a grown adult, inspired to be a better citizen.
As far as earning, I wouldn't say I’ve learned a lot of new content since this past week has been about referring to the things I’ve already learned. However, I’ve learned a bit about what makes a good TED Talk. I’ve watched and listened to about 10 since we’ve been creating ours and I’ve noticed a few similarities. The first, they involve some sort of humor, a key thing that keeps you engaged. The next, their slides or visual elements relate exactly to what they are saying. They don’t have confusing, irrelevant pictures behind them. The third is that they have a powerful conclusion that typically brings it back to the audience, making the audience members ask themselves some sort of question or reflect on their own life. Finally, they somehow leave you thinking about something in a different way, if only for a while, it stays with you. I am hoping that our TED Talk involves all of these aspects.
April 26th
In all honesty this project did not hold a lot of challenges for me. This is a result of not pushing myself with creating a bigger product. So, actually, my challenge was the lack of challenge. Originally we had the idea of creating more of an event but we soon decided against it because we thought we couldn't pull off a successful event. Looking back, this was a very stupid reason that came from a place of a fear of failure. Out of the 2 of us, I was the bigger critic of the event idea. I shied away from doing a more challenging end product and instead of feeling glad that we’d gone the easier way, I felt that in a way, I’d cheated myself and, even worse, cheated Lily. This being said, what we did create I am proud of, however small they were. Our products (Voter Registration Booth, Pamphlets, Twitter) were well done and I believe they were Beautiful Work. This project could have been more challenging but it was a really powerful learning experience about the importance of not shying away from moonshots because they may fail.
In this project I learned a huge amount about the Political System in America. This is perhaps some of the most valuable information I’ve learned this year because it is, and will continue to be, so relevant. The things that I’ve learned about the election process and all that that imcompasses will be something I will revisit every 4 years for the rest of my life. It was really exciting to be doing this research during an election year, especially this election. I learned a huge amount about the stances of the candidates while making the pamphlets. I began to really start to understand the political climate in our country. Most of all, I’ve learned how much more power you have when you are informed on the political process. This has been a learning rich project and it's really exciting that Lily and I acquired this knowledge without the prompting of teachers, this informedness stemmed for our passion.
I absolutely think that the 20% Project should be a common occurrence in schools across America. This project is so important because it truly makes you look inside and find a passion. Personally, the Project Brainstorm at the beginning was so powerful for me. At this I had a small internal existential crisis because I really didn't know what my passions were, But then as I brainstormed more I realized I did, I just needed the time and space to pull them out. On top of this, this Project really called upon the student to handle themselves in a more mature way. It was actually very similar to a job in the way that we didn't have someone holding their hand the whole time, making deadlines, redirecting them. This project was eye opening on many levels and I believe every student in high school should participate in a project similar to this, its worth it.
In all honesty this project did not hold a lot of challenges for me. This is a result of not pushing myself with creating a bigger product. So, actually, my challenge was the lack of challenge. Originally we had the idea of creating more of an event but we soon decided against it because we thought we couldn't pull off a successful event. Looking back, this was a very stupid reason that came from a place of a fear of failure. Out of the 2 of us, I was the bigger critic of the event idea. I shied away from doing a more challenging end product and instead of feeling glad that we’d gone the easier way, I felt that in a way, I’d cheated myself and, even worse, cheated Lily. This being said, what we did create I am proud of, however small they were. Our products (Voter Registration Booth, Pamphlets, Twitter) were well done and I believe they were Beautiful Work. This project could have been more challenging but it was a really powerful learning experience about the importance of not shying away from moonshots because they may fail.
In this project I learned a huge amount about the Political System in America. This is perhaps some of the most valuable information I’ve learned this year because it is, and will continue to be, so relevant. The things that I’ve learned about the election process and all that that imcompasses will be something I will revisit every 4 years for the rest of my life. It was really exciting to be doing this research during an election year, especially this election. I learned a huge amount about the stances of the candidates while making the pamphlets. I began to really start to understand the political climate in our country. Most of all, I’ve learned how much more power you have when you are informed on the political process. This has been a learning rich project and it's really exciting that Lily and I acquired this knowledge without the prompting of teachers, this informedness stemmed for our passion.
I absolutely think that the 20% Project should be a common occurrence in schools across America. This project is so important because it truly makes you look inside and find a passion. Personally, the Project Brainstorm at the beginning was so powerful for me. At this I had a small internal existential crisis because I really didn't know what my passions were, But then as I brainstormed more I realized I did, I just needed the time and space to pull them out. On top of this, this Project really called upon the student to handle themselves in a more mature way. It was actually very similar to a job in the way that we didn't have someone holding their hand the whole time, making deadlines, redirecting them. This project was eye opening on many levels and I believe every student in high school should participate in a project similar to this, its worth it.