About
The Stewie Project is my Junior Project that I have been working on since the beginning of the year. Junior Projects are a semester-long endeavor that we develop and do that helps the community. My Junior Project is something I have named 'The Stewie Project.' Last year, the no-kill shelter HARF came to our community engagement class to teach us about animals and brought a dog born without his front legs. This dog's name was Stewie, and in Sophmore year, we agreed to make a wheelchair to assist him in walking. We could not finish it, so I decided to pick that project back up. Mr. Hazlet is my mentor for this project and has been helping me construct it.
21st Century Skills |
Pros and Cons |
The Junior Projects use Civic Literacy and Engagement Skills. This project focuses heavily on community and using our skills to make the world a better place. You interact with many different people throughout this entire project, many of that are a part of various non-profits. These projects we do help better the lives of our community, either through building, education, or even fundraising.
Throughout this, I learned different skills that have been honed to be better. My professional communication skills have drastically improved, as my ability to keep track of a schedule and my ability to build things in a real-world setting.
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I am proud of how on task I was in the beginning. I had a timeline for this project, and up until now, I was ahead of schedule. I was able to contact HARF promptly without procrastinating and got the measurements for Stewie right before they left for a trip to the mainland.
The most challenging part of this project was designing the wheelchair. Understand, dog wheelchairs are custom to every dog, causing them to have to be made from scratch. I am a Junior in high school trying to make something engineers do as their job with cheaper materials. Figuring out an efficient way to build this without getting it wrong was very hard, and I have made many changes to the building design.
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What Could be Better |
Past and Future Learning |
What I would have added for this project was a fundraiser. Just in case I could not make a functioning wheelchair for Stewie, I would have liked to donate money so they could get one from a professional due to how expensive they are. Since dog wheelchairs are custom to each dog, they range from $300-$700 per wheelchair.
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This project relates to the Community Engagement project we did previously. This Junior Project is like a redo of previous projects, but instead of a class, it's just a single person. I felt like since we were unable to finish the wheelchair previously, we fell through on a promise we had made to them, which I felt terrible about. I thought my Junior Project could be the perfect time to continue the project.
I could apply the knowledge I gathered through this project on multiple levels. By researching dog wheelchairs or talking to HARF and setting up meeting times with them, I learned how to communicate with adults better and used critical thinking skills to create a design for the wheelchair.
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