Students Showcase Dedication to Service Marymount’s Annual Kingdom Fair

This event provides Juniors with a chance to both showcase their hard work, learning, and dedication to service, while also allowing for Sophomores and Freshmen to learn more about service-related opportunities throughout across a spectrum of organizations.

Head of School Jacqueline Landry addressed students and faculty saying, “It is essential to who we are as a school, and in the spirit of our Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary mission, that we celebrate our service commitments with the same focus and enthusiasm as we do all other subjects. We are honored to learn about all the time and passion our Juniors have put into their projects this year; they are truly living out our RSHM mission and our school’s values.”

 

This year’s Kingdom Fair featured a unique new element to the Juniors’ service projects: an incorporation of design-thinking and creative problem-solving projects. Students had the opportunity to apply innovative principles to the social and environmental issues they observed through their time at their sites, and to propose a solution to their service hosts by the end of their engagement. Theology faculty member Boyoung Kim, reflects that, “these projects are not just volunteering or community service, they are meant to truly help make a difference in the communities we serve by offering a fresh perspective and an innovative approach.” Allowing for a creative task inspired many new and unique ideas from our students that sought to the address specific needs of the organizations in which they worked.

 

Victoria S. ‘18, for example, designed an app for the organization where she was volunteering as an after-school program assistant. Noticing that teachers, tutors and after-school administrators often did not have an opportunity to communicate effectively about each student’s needs, she conceptualized an app that would provide a resource for communication, helping connect all these groups together to better serve the students.

 

Meanwhile, other Juniors worked in our Makerspace to create physical tools and solutions for their organization of choice. While Marina D. ‘18 was volunteering at Cedar Sinai Hospital, she observed that patients recovering from surgery often faced boredom and depression while also trying to regain motor skills. To address these issues, she conceptualized, designed, and printed a puzzle, utilizing our Makerspace, specifically geared toward motor and cognitive rehabilitation, as well as teamwork and fun.

 

Some organizations faced business and marketing challenges that our students were uniquely positioned to address. Patty L. ‘18 and Gabby K. ‘18, when working at St. Roberts Center, a nonprofit in Venice, CA that aids the homeless, realized that the organization could not reach the constituents or donors it needed to thrive without a website. “In the modern-day world,” Patty L. told our student body, “every organization needs a website in order to garner support and to reach the populations it is hoping to serve. St. Roberts Center didn’t have the time or resources to create a website, so we designed one for them.” This beautiful solution, made possible by our students’ well-developed skills in graphic design and coding, provided a real-world benefit to St. Roberts Center that it would not have otherwise been able to access.  

 

In addition to these creative and innovative solutions, our students were also given the option to create a presentation that utilized digital technology to better communicate their messages. Several students crafted wonderful short films about their projects, from an impressive animated short about the Balona Wetlands Project, to an engaging piece on the Children’s Center. These digital records will be compiled and saved in a resource center, available for all of our students to watch for years to come in order to learn more about service opportunities.

 

Boyoung Kim says that, “reflecting on service helps you make connections with larger issues in our society today. Our students have had the opportunity to observe the community directly in new ways through their projects, and to think creatively about how it can best be served.”

 

We congratulate our Juniors on their incredible projects and their dedication to service, and we know they will continue to stay connected to the wonderful communities and organizations they served. Thanks also to all of the incredible organizations who graciously hosted our students this year and in years past, and who are doing essential and challenging work to benefit our greater Los Angeles community, and communities abroad, every day. Many thanks as well to our wonderful theology faculty, Carol Fitzsimmons and Christie Borges, who worked tirelessly to bring this wonderful event to life for our students.