We participate in Youth Leadership, Colorguard, Yearbook and Ladies Let’s Talk, which has given us skills/experience in dedication, leadership, community-building,  and inter-cultural connectivity.

A problem that we are concerned about is social isolation among women who are refugees who aren’t connected to the community. 

Despite the influx of recent immigration, there are not a lot of support systems in place to help women access resources or community.  Possible causes of this problem are language barrier & lack of opportunities to form community. 

This problem has negatively impacted women who are refugees because it is incredibly hard to thrive in the US without good support systems and resources. 

This project would establish a branch of Ladies Let’s Talk, a local organization, at our school. Ladies Let’s Talk seeks to end social isolation among refugee women in our community by providing resources, community, and conversational English practice. 

 

Not only has this never been done before in the history of our program, but it is a legacy we aspire to leave behind as we pursue engineering careers after Ann Richards. With this kart, we seek to gain unparalleled education in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. With a personalized curriculum and hands-on learning surrounding our electric go-kart, we hope to inspire our younger sisters at Ann Richards to become engineers.

 

A problem that we are concerned about is the abundance of blank walls in our new building that feel particularly cold and sterile, especially to our younger students. This problem has negatively impacted our school community because our brand new building feels too open and empty and therefore creates a feeling of isolation. Possible causes of this problem are the lack of time to coordinate the creation of a permanent art piece on our walls as well as the lack of resources. Despite our school being a place full of creativity and craft-making, there is a severe lack of representation of our students’ creativity across the campus. We used to reside in a building that had permanent paintings on hallway columns and doorways and other art pieces from students displayed in the halls across campus. Art is something that connects people and makes people feel welcome, and that connection is something that is necessary after spending so much time apart. We would like to put together a mural or student artworks on a community wall that people would see on a regular basis to celebrate the importance of connection as well as contribute the first permanent art piece to this new building, both leaving the legacy of our old building filled with art in its halls and to hopefully inspire others to leave their creative mark on the school in the future. Please consider joining us in our colorful project, thank you! 

Georgia is not sure what she is interested in pursuing yet, Mairany is interested in international business, and Isabella is interested in studying chemical engineering in medicine. 

Despite school being in person this year, a disconnect is still occurring. Grade levels seem more separated, especially in this new school and because of the pandemic.

This problem has negatively impacted students because we are unable to form connections with people outside of our classes. 

With this issue, we were hoping to bring back some form of the Ask Ann box, where students could get anonymous help and advice from upperclassmen, while still being safe in regards to covid.

We are interested in being part of the medical industry and the field of law in the future.

We participate in Sport, Dance, Cheerleading, and community service. These extracurriculars have given us the opportunity to grow and strengthen our communication as well as our leadership skills.

A problem that we are concerned about is how Covid has had a negative affect towards the low income families, thus making it difficult to obtain food due to loss of jobs and inability to obtain the necessary resources. 

Despite that El Buen Sanamaritano has a garden not many of the people or volunteers that work at the location find the time or skill to maintain it. The main reason as to why the ordnance of the garden isn't being kept up is because many of the workers don't have the ability to take time to the side and use it towards the garden due to the high amount of people coming in for the food bank.

This problem has negatively impacted the local El Buen Sanmaritano food bank and community because the community has had one less factor that brings them together and less fresh food that they can proudly say they grew.

Please consider joining me in researching and addressing the movement to help EL Buen Sanmaritano in our project.

-MILKA MINCHACA
-JACKY PEREZ
-BRIANNA AVILES

With our experiences in nonprofit service organizations, advocacy organizations, fine art electives, and leadership positions, we want to use our creativity, organizational skills, problem solving skills and passion to create permanent access to menstrual products within our school while being mindful of the environmental impact that we have. 

Despite the fact that menstrual products should be more widely distributed and financially accessible in general, menstrual products are still expensive and 

Despite new access to period products on campus, a more permanent dispenser system would provide a sustainable long-term solution to this problem.

Possible causes of this problem are the current price of menstrual products & potential lack of personal resources. 

This problem has negatively impacted menstruators on campus in the way that lack of access to period products impacts school absenteeism. 

Please consider joining me in researching and addressing a lack of access to menstrual product on campus in our project.

We want to create a more loving and aware community when it comes to tough situations like sex trafficking. We want to create safer spaces for all people in the community of Austin and especially in Austin schools. We want communities to be more open to working towards positive change and sex trafficking prevention. We are going to be working towards this change because we are passionate about helping others, specifically survivors who are in recovery, people who are in fear of trafficking,  and those who are in danger of trafficking. We want to create this helpful change to aid the lives and minds from experiencing a traumatic event, and protect everyone from the danger that human trafficking presents.

IDEAS:

Our team is overflowing with ideas to reach these goals that we stated above. Some of those ideas include: Create a symbol/logo that represents support for people in recovery of sex trafficking and spread awareness/sell merchandise (possibly including bracelets, stickers, etc…) where proceeds go towards organizations working towards helping the tough recovery process, helping sex trafficking prevention organizations in any way they need, conducting a clothing drive around the Austin community to donate to women’s shelters in Austin because a large percentage of women in those shelters have experienced some abuse at some point in their lifetime, working with self defense experts to create a video about prevention to show to AISD schools (at ARS could possibly be during yoga, advisory, or STARS time), create self defense signs to put in communities with visual examples of self defense, and create sex trafficking awareness signs to place around communities that include a help hotline number. If we would like to go further, we could also provide resources (phone numbers, websites, and emails) to join recovery support groups for  high school students, where they can access around AISD schools.

Fatima and Alice are interested in Engineering and Architecture. Liz and Nevaeh are interested in working in the business field, and Kiara is interested in becoming a wildlife biologist. While Nahomi, Anastacia, and Kim are interested in medical professions.

We are all involved in fine arts (band, orchestra, and guitar) along with sports (cross country, volleyball, basketball, soccer, cheer, and track). These organizations have allowed us to gain experience in building connections, teamwork, independence, communication, and time management.

A problem that we are concerned about is the well-being of displaced birds.

Despite the availability of wildlife rescue locations, there is still a large number of birds/wildlife that are in danger. 

Possible causes of this problem are overpopulated locations & weather conditions. 

This problem has negatively impacted these birds because of the lack of shelter, healthcare, and necessities. 

Hello, our names are Cassandra, Alex, Maddie, Fernada and Amaya. Three of us are currently in the biomedical pathway and Two are in the Engineering pathway at the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders. In our team we have a future Doctor, Nurse, Business woman, and two Architecture Engineers. All five of us participate in dance and individually we also are in SELL’s, ACE, Orchestra, Basketball, and Track. These activities have given us certain skills like teamwork, communication, cooperation, and many more which can be implemented into helping the community. Something that we are interested in doing is reaching out to retirement homes and starting a podcast with the people that are interested in being interviewed. We would like to do activities with them while also asking for advice they have acquired in their lives which can be helpful to our community here at Ann Richards.