April 25th - Second meeting with supervisor (Entry #6)

We started off the meeting with once again, discussing the global context to my project, as mentioned in my previous post, myself, Ms. Nobert and Nicole agreed that the global context is Fairness and Development. After that, we moved on to discussing all the steps needed to complete this project, and when (just like an action plan). However, Nicole and I were both unsure about where in the project we are expected to be at during this time since we didn't really receive any information at all regarding the project... so Ms. Nobert gave us some guiding questions for us to answer so we have a better understand on our projects, goals and what is needed to be achieved. 

Why is this project interesting for you?

Choosing a project and topic that interests me is crucial for the personal project, since this project will last for about 1 year, that's why I must be interested in my topic in order to complete the requirements throughout the year. My idea is being a student representative of CDNIS, being part of the Terry Fox Run committee and organizing the event. This interests me since this marathon is for a very good cause: cancer research. I have very strong connections with cancer since I lost a young cousin, due to cancer. Along with that, I am the secretary of UNICEF club at CDNIS, therefore I need to organize meetings and learn hot they work, and also communicating with members allow me to improve my public speaking skills, which was ALWAYS my weakness during class. Finally, I like doing sports in general therefore a type of event like a marathon would be interesting to organize. Above are reasons why I believe I am interested in my project. 

What do you know about it?

After attending 2 meetings with the committee, I know that A LOT of work and planning is needed behind this event. However, I'm still a beginner about attending meetings, planning and organizing this huge event. I'm definitely going to be constantly learning throughout this project about how to organize an event like this.

How I know I've been successful?

• Participants: 1500 people
• Money: $800,000 HKD for new technology (to analyze circulating tumour cells, ultimately improving care for cancer patients
• Being a committed committee member by attending meetings and doing what they tell me to do

Appropriately challenging?

Before deciding that I'm organizing an event for the personal project, I had other ideas in mind: designing and creating a pair of jeans from scratch. This idea for a project is definitely not too challenging since it would basically take only a short amount of time to complete, I've seen previous projects like designing a whole clothing line, which is way more challenging compared to my first idea. However, my idea of organizing a big event is challenging because there's a of "behind the scenes" work to do, attending monthly meetings, completing tasks on time requested by the committee and communicating back and forth between CDNIS and the committee.

April 6th - First task (Entry #5)

As explained previously, the first task I was assigned is to create a handbook to put on the official website as a guide for school participants for the run. This is is the basic layout of the handbook:

• Welcoming page (a message from the organiser)
• History of Terry Fox and his story
• Basic introduction of this run
• How to participate 
• Suggested timeline
• Key policies & Guidelines 
• The course of the marathon

I did this very quickly since I need to be responsible for whatever is put out and when it is put out. Here are some screenshots from the handbook I created:

Creating a QR code is extremely simple and convenient for readers, I thought that this is a good way to quickly link readers to a web page instead of entering a link.

My process journal + Spring break goals (Entry #4)

I finally decided that I was going to go with an online blog as my process journal for the upcoming personal project that I will be working on the whole year. I was debating between a blog and an actual journal, even though keeping a written journal would look much nicer, I thought that it would take too much time to write and scan and page. Other reasons why I chose a blog as my process journal:

• Able to archive posts to see every reflection posted per month, this is great for looking at progress
• Posts separated by tags and categories, can be easily found
• Easy to use and less time consuming
• Accessible to everyone, anywhere

I'd say this week is the week everyone officially "started" their personal project, which includes setting up their personal project and having a meeting with their supervisor. Since the spring break is coming back, I have a lot of free time in my hands and I'd like to set up some goals for myself. By the end of spring break...

• Finish the school handbook and submit to committee to proofread
• Email Karen to see if there's anything she wants me to do
• Contact CDNIS teachers who agreed to participate in event (Mr. Lovegrove and Mr. Hughes)

April 6th - Discussion and planning (Entry #3)

Today, I met up with my cousin (who is the chair and organiser of the Terry Fox run), and we brainstormed briefly all the possible tasks of what I need to complete for this project. Below is all of the ideas we have for things I will have to complete.

I am the CDNIS representative of this event, this is an extremely important role as this run originated from Canada, and we are a Canadian school, it is key for our school to know about this event and possibly donate/participate in this event. I will be the one passing the information back and forth, for example: I will receive some information during the committee meeting, and I will have to contact the appropriate people in the school such as Mr. Lovegrove and Mr. Hughes (they have been previously contacted about this even and they both agreed to help out). I also decided to join the Marketing and Public Relations team, there are many aspects to being part of this committee.

I emailed the marketing and PR committee head about my idea of creating a handbook about the run for schools that can be put on the website as well as for our school to look at (as I'm a student, I would know which content would be appropriate or not), this is just one of the tasks I will be doing as part of the committee. Some other tasks:

• Designing posters for our school (which has to get approved by the administrative team before putting them up at school)
• Designing the overall poster for this event (eg. to be digitally posted on social media)
• Designing the t-shirt for this event
• Cost, time to produce the t-shirts and the quantity 
• Raising awareness about this event at our school by hosting events such as a bake sale
• Get as many participants from our school as possible to
• Give a pledge/donate money
• Volunteer for event
• Participate in event (marathon runner)

April 4th - Meeting with the TFR committee (Entry #2)

I attended my first meeting with the Terry Fox Run committee (there were about 20 or so people there). The meeting was held in the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong (also known as the CanCham), which is located in Central.

As this was my first ever meeting I attended, I was a little afraid since there were representatives from big Canadian universities such as UBC, SFU and UofT. During the meeting, a lot of aspects were discussed, here is the basic agenda:

Through this meeting, I understood the basics of this marathon, and understood how big of an event this is, with so much planning and so much work is needed to be thought through before it. With so many different committees, I got an idea of what each committee is in charge of, and I thought the Marketing and PR committee interested me the most. I have a lot of "research" to do after this meeting, such as reading the documents that are provided in a Google Drive, but, this topic really interests me therefore the reading is barely anything. Meetings will be held on the first Thursday every month and I hope I can make it to all of them!

April 2nd - First meeting with supervisor (Entry #1)

Today, I met with my personal project supervisor for the year - Ms. Nobert for the first time! I met her along with another grade 9 student (Nicole Hon) and we discussed many aspects of our upcoming personal project. Firstly, we introduced ourselves and what our plan is for this personal project, at the time, I was still not too sure about what I was going to do - I was either going to design and create jeans or join the committee, attend meetings, volunteer and participate in the Terry Fox marathon in Hong Kong. The 3 of us brainstormed and gave me a brilliant idea, which is to design and create merchandise such as t-shirts, wristbands and posters for the Terry Fox run. Secondly, we discussed the form of our process journal, to do it by hand or digitally. Nicole and I both decided to record our process of this project digitally through a blog, even though an actually journal on paper would be more creative and visually appealing, we figured that it would take too much time and would be a pain to scan all of the pages. Finally, we discussed the global context of this project, and we decided that the global context is Fairness and Development regarding my personal project. I am really excited to begin on this project soon.

Here, I am communicating with my supervisor via email.

I created a mind map of all the possible ideas for my upcoming personal project, including its global context so I am able to understand each topic more through a visual.