For my capstone I paired up with Personal Trainer/Entrepreneur Mr.Tariq CEO of Bodie2Body Fitness, ISSA Elite Trainer (a trainer who is considered “the cream of the crop.” They have advanced fitness knowledge and skills. They know how to help a client reach their fitness goal with more than just exercise), and I am proud to say Mentor to create a website for my peers and anyone interested in the fitness and health department. My website consists of a multitude of tiny pockets for those who are either looking to get into fitness and learn how it’s connected to health or are just curious and want to gain knowledge about the topics. On my website you should be pleased to see I have provided motivational quotes, home and gym workouts, facts about how health and fitness play a huge part in your mental health, meal planning, and healthy drink alternatives such as smoothies/juices/and teas. With all of these great topics to look into on my website there are also a few blog entries on my journey of being pescatarian for 4 months and feedback on the benefits and downfalls I had during those 4 months. Along with those blog entries will be an interview with Mr.Tariq answering a questionnaire I put together for him.I started off by figuring out what I liked to do in my freetime or as a hobby after brainstorming all of the many things I like to do. I then looked at the topics I was interested in and fitness and health stood out to me the most. I continued to find a mentor then it clicked why not ask my moms personal trainer. I politely texted him over instagram and he was more than welcoming to help me out along the way. After sending him my questionnaire and talking over my ideas with him I got started on making my website and creating an instagram account. From there I went off of the websites listed in my bibliography and the knowledge given to me by my mentor and started to put it together on my websites. So I am proud to present my capstone to you guys because I have had a great connection to it and the knowledge I gained throughout my whole process was pretty cool to me. From creating a website and putting information I actually enjoyed talking and learning about was fun and peaceful for me. Wishfully you guys gain something from it and remember you body is your temple and your mind is the foundation.

Recycling My Own Paper

The School District of Philadelphia does not recycle and this has never sat right with me. I have imagined all of the paper and notebooks that I would throw out at the end of the school year. Thousands of sheets of paper are printed on, used, and thrown out everyday at schools and it’s upsetting to imagine all that going into a landfill.
For a long time I have been wanting to become more environmentally friendly. I have a core memory of making my own recycled paper in The Franklin Institute when I was in elementary school. I thought it was the coolest thing and I’d always wanted to try it out again. I would even keep my paper from school hoping that I’d recycle it myself one day. I didn’t want to go through the process just once and forget about it so I thought my capstone, a long term project, would be the perfect opportunity to try it out.
For my project, I collected paper from SLA and my Mom’s office, Roffman Miller Associates Inc, with the purpose of recycling it and eventually returning it back to where it came from. I experimented with trying to make different styles of paper and different size frames. I even made my own homemade frame. I wanted to share the knowledge I had learned so I made a “How-To” video on recycling your own paper.

Link to Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rsJPIbg4MNR2brh98xikqVNgVpaYGQqS/view?usp=sharing

The Abstract:

According to Philadelphia’s Office of Sustainability, 35,000 tons of clothing and textiles are thrown away in the city each year. I created Drop and Shop to lower that number. By providing a place for students to drop off clothes they don’t want anymore and others to shop for free, new-to-them items, fewer clothes go to landfills. Students can stop by anytime, and anyone is allowed to shop, regardless of whether they’ve dropped clothes.

I officially started in March by putting a poster and collection box out on the first floor. I also launched an Instagram account to promote the project. The racks and hangers are borrowed from Ben Franklin Community Closet, and SLA’s vocational training program helped me organize everything. In the past five weeks, over 200 items have been dropped and 85+ shopped.

I created a spreadsheet for inventory of the clothes and updated it at least once a week. I then made graphs showing how the number of items each week varied, as well as the frequency of items and sizes. I’ll provide an analysis during my presentation.

I’ve heard lots of positive feedback so I decided to keep the Drop and Shop running until the end of the year. My goal is to find a purpose for each item, meaning that none will go to landfills. There is also a 10th-grader who is going to continue it after I graduate.

As clothing production and processing exacerbate the climate crisis, programs like these are the future.

The Product:

A google drive folder including the guidelines, some people shopping, posters I made, and pictures of the setup throughout the weeks.

The Instagram account: @sla.drop.and.shop

Annotated bibliography

For my capstone, I wanted to find out how I improve the experience of volunteers at non profits using 3D printed using computer aided design that I learned in CTE Engineering, specifically a cloud-based 3D modeling software platform by the name of Fusion 360.

The goal was to create a design for a produce cutting tool for uses in a non-profit food distributor to the local homeless population for volunteers to use, named Manna on Main Street, located at 420 N 20th St, Philadelphia, PA 19130.

I had decided to bring other seniors to volunteer at Manna with me, however I encountered obstacles of the product I made being too small to function, and for the size to be able to properly be used as intended, the 3D printer would not allow for such size. When speaking to people at Manna, they informed me that foreign objects were not allowed in the kitchen, so that hindered the completion of my capstone in that regard.

Fusion 360 Designs:

Final Product:

Bibliography:

For my capstone project I chose to do a donation drive around my neighborhood and then use those donations that I collected to donate them to different organizations around the Philadelphia area. The reason why chose to do this as my capstone project is because around my house there’s an old man who often comes by our house because he has no place to live so our family normally gives him some clothes and food so I wanted to give back to the less fortunate by donating the clothes that I cannot wear or don’t like. In order to get a perspective on if people would donate or not I made a survey asking them if they donate and they don’t donate then why so. From that survey the results I got were that while people want to donate they can’t because either their schedule is too crowded or they don’t know where to donate. I then went around my neighborhood to collect donations from my neighbors. I did this every weekend for a month. I then went to different donation centers and donated the clothes that I got to those places.

Bibliography

Hersch, Elizabeth G. “Know Homelessness .” Know Homelessness, October 2020. http://philadelphiaofficeofhomelessservices.org/. I found this source to be useful because I wanted to know how many homeless people are in the Philadelphia area. The reason why I wanted to know this is because whenever I am on the subway or when I’m around my neighborhood I always manage to see a homeless person or someone in need. This source allows me to know how big the homeless problem is in the city of Philadelphia. I am surprised how there are fewer homeless people than I had initially thought but it is still a problem that needs to be addressed before it becomes too big to handle. Lu, Diana. “Where to Donate Stuff in Philly.” https://www.inquirer.com. The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 18, 2018. https://www.inquirer.com/philly-tips/donate-furniture-clothes-philadelphia-pickups-20211018.html. This source provides information about some good places to donate in philly. I say this is a good source for me because it tells me some good places where I can donate clothes, toys and other things. This can help me find the perfect place to donate all the stuff that the people that need it. Another reason why this helps me is because I don’t know the city of philadelphia like the back of my hand as I stay inside often due to Covid regulations so this website helps me find some good places in which I can donate the stuff that I have collected. Colón, Siani. “Here Are 7 Places Where You Can Donate Clothes in Philly.” Kensington Voice, August 14, 2020. https://kensingtonvoice.com/en/here-are-7-places-you-can-donate-clothes-to-in-philly/. I chose this article because it provides some more information about where to donate in philadelphia. This can be a helpful article when it comes to my capstone project because it provides more places for me to donate the clothes that I get during the drive. Another reason why it helps is because I can narrow down the places to the donation centers that are close to where I live. This would allow me to be able to be as efficient as possible when it comes to traveling to the donation centers as I could find the ones that are closest to where I am. Mers, Tony. “The Importance of Donating Clothes.” GoGreenDrop Blog, August 20, 2020. https://www.gogreendrop.com/blog/the-importance-of-donating-clothes/. I chose this article because it shows the importance of donation and why people should do it. Since I want to run a donation drive as my capstone then I would need to be able to teach people about the importance of donating and how that can positively impact someone’s life. Another reason as to why this is a good source is because I can use this source to compel other people to donate their stuff to the drive. This is the main objective in why I want to do my capstone so this source helps so that to the people that I am presenting to.

Mers, Tony. “How to Plan A Donation Drive for Charity.” GoGreenDrop Blog. Accessed January 28, 2022. https://www.gogreendrop.com/blog/how-to-plan-a-donation-drive-for-charity/. The reason why I chose to use this source is because since I have a lack of knowledge in terms of planning a donation drive this website can help me make a good plan for that in terms of my capstone project. This can help me in a big way as I won’t be as confused on what to do and as such make my work for planning this event more efficient and less stressful in terms of my mental health. Another upside to this is that it also puts less stress on the mentor (Mr Symonds) as he can focus on other things to help with the capstone.

Zau, Renee. “10 Tips and Tricks for a Successful Donation Drive.” DonationMatch. In-kind Donation and Marketing Platform | DonationMatch, April 24, 2018. https://www.donationmatch.com/blog-list/index.php/10-tips-tricks-successful-donation-drive. I chose this article because I want to make this capstone as successful as possible so I believe that through this article it can help me do the best drive that I can do within my power.This can help me in a big way as I won’t be as confused on what to do and as such make my work for planning this event more efficient and less stressful in terms of my mental health. Another upside to this is that it also puts less stress on the mentor (Mr Symonds) as he can focus on other things to help with the capstone. “Philadelphia Clothing Donations.” GreenDrop, LLC. Accessed January 27, 2022. https://www.gogreendrop.com/philadelphia-donations. The reason for me choosing this source is because it is another organization that could potentially help me with this capstone project. This could be a helpful article when it comes to my capstone project because it provides more places for me to donate the clothes that I get during the drive. Another reason why it helps is because I can narrow down the places to the donation centers that are close to where I live. This can help reduce the amount of time it takes for me to find organizations to help with my capstone and reduce the amount of time that it takes for me to plan the event.

“Where to Donate Clothing Here in Philadelphia.” Temple Sustainability Blog, October 22, 2020. https://sites.temple.edu/tusustainability/2020/10/22/donate-clothing-in-philadephia/. The reason as to why I chose this article is because it provides some more information about where to donate in philadelphia. This can be a helpful article when it comes to my capstone project because it provides more places for me to donate the clothes that I get during the drive. Another reason why it helps is because I can narrow down the places to the donation centers that are close to where I live. This would allow me to be able to be as efficient as possible when it comes to traveling to the donation centers as I could find the ones that are closest to where I am.

For this project, I chose to foster 5 nursing kittens, and their mom (not pictured). You could agree the final product of this capstone is a multitude of different things, whether that be five healthy kittens, free of disease and sickness. Or being able to give animals that went from living on the streets, a new, forever home. The process, was, chaotic to say the least. I didn’t plan on making this such a major part of my year, I intended for it to be a side project, but it was pretty obvious after the first week that this would take much more time than I had originally thought. It took a while to get equipped to what I would be doing every day, before and after school. The first 2 weeks included feeding the mom more food than the average cat. Because she was nursing a litter of five, she needed to be overfed for her to produce enough milk. In the afternoons, I would watch the kittens nurse to make sure they’re getting equal amounts of nutrition from their mom. At around 3-4 weeks, I introduced the kittens to wet and dry food, which also meant I had to give them a litter box, which was much easier said then done. Soon, they will begin to visit the veterinarian to get their vaccinations, and spay/neuter surgery, to make them eligible for adoption.