Washington Elementary's Design for Change program preps for Global Summit in Rome

SANDPOINT — After months filled with researching, reaching out to local companies, Socratic roundtable discussions and some acting practice, Washington Elementary school’s Design for Change students presented year-long projects tackling a variety of current issues at the Heartwood Center on Wednesday May 29. By sharing their findings in front of family, friends and the community, the Design for Change students gained some practice before they will present their research to the Design for Change Global Summit, which will be held in Rome from November 27-30.

“This is your dream as an educator,” Washington Elementary sixth grade teacher and Design for Change elective instructor Ann Dickinson said. “You want your kids to learn collaboration skills, you want them to be creative thinkers and you want them to make a difference in their world by gaining leadership skills. Every year we all start out where the kids are trying to figure out and they have all these ideas, then the magic happens through this process.”

The Design for Change students settled on three topics: Charlene Hitchock’s second grade class tackled reducing food waste, Dickinson’s fifth and sixth graders researched local poverty and homelessness and Dickinson’s Design for Change alumni — in tandem with their church’s small group — started @7BLove_Project, a local social media initiative promoting kindness and inclusiveness via the hashtag #YouMatter. The presentations on Wednesday included a question-and-answer panel for the audience. Additionally, in a lighthearted move, one of the groups sang a recycling song written to the tune of viral hit “Baby Shark.” Yet the commonalities between all three presentations were that they followed the same four-step “feel-imagine-do-share” research process and each presentation was completely student-made.

The local Design for Change students’ motto is “start local and go global,” and the fifth and sixth graders in the poverty project learned this motto early in the process. A handful of students called bigger local businesses and even reached out to Amazon to help donate supplies for care packages to distribute to local homeless individuals. For some, the prospect of adults listening to them about these current issues came as a surprise. Reflecting on the early stages the project, sixth grader Demi Driggs admitted she was shocked that a worker from Amazon even picked up the phone when the Design for Change students called for donations.

“It was nerve-wracking,” Driggs said, recalling the moment when an Amazon representative answered her cold-call. “Some of us were scared. But some of [the larger companies] weren’t able to help us, which was sad, but then we went in our community and they were able to help.”

From there, the sixth graders followed their motto and decided to start local. By partnering with local businesses and even the Sandpoint Police Department, the Design for Change students eventually developed care packages with toiletries, essentials and other helpful items to give to local homeless individuals. Thanks to the sixth graders’ efforts, Sandpoint police officers now carry these care packages in their police cars in case they encounter individuals in need while on patrol.

Hitchcock’s second grade class made a similar, yet equally significant local impact with their food waste project.

After discovering that 40% of food the United States produces ends up in landfills, the students tried chipping into that number at Washington Elementary. Through their research and partnering with local farmers, the second graders set up food scraps buckets, collected leftover fruits, vegetables and grains, then used their leftovers to feed local pigs, chickens and goats. In addition, they established food share buckets, which saved intact foods for snacks later in the school day. Thanks to their efforts, trash at Washington Elementary decreased from 36 pounds per day down to 12 — all thanks to repurposing food scraps.

Yet some of Design for Change’s efforts were less-visible. During the end of the question-and-answer panel, the Design for Change students shared how the class changed them in ways ranging from reducing plastic or food waste in their daily lives, to feeling empathetic for homeless individuals, to even going out of their way to show more kindness towards minority groups. But sixth grader Ellie Meneghini, who led the bulk of the panel, shared how the class helped her come out of her shell and discover talents she didn’t know she had.

“At the beginning of sixth grade, I did not speak to anyone and didn’t know my classmates’ names,” Meneghini said. “But I feel like Design for Change has helped me find part of myself that I didn’t know existed.”

While Washington Elementary’s Design for Change classes and electives have regularly earned Panhandle Alliance for Education (PAFE) grants to fund their research, Dickinson said the group’s next steps are not only finding a teacher to take on DFC once Dickinson moves on to Sandpoint Middle School, but also her small group applying for a 501(c)(3) nonprofit status in order to fund future endeavors. Dickinson foresees she will start a Design for Change elective class at the middle school within the next two years.

But for now, Washington Elementary’s three teams will focus on November, as they’ll be one of the youngest groups invited to the Design for Change Global Summit in Rome. More than 4,000 children from over 70 countries will present their projects in front of the largest Design for Change event in the organization’s history. In the interim, the group will raise funds in order to pay for travel costs. Any inquiries or donations can be sent to ann.dickinson@lposd.org, or by calling 208-263-4759.