My senior capstone was to redesign the senior cafe. The goal was to enable us as seniors to create something that will be able to stay after our present SLA seniors. We wanted to make the senior cafe a place where seniors would actually like to eat their lunch. Over the course of this project we learned about leadership and taking control and leading by example. We wanted to do this for many reasons. Questions were brought up such as,  How would the space be useful after we leave?  Why don’t many students use the cafe now? ,What kind of room do we want it to be?,. Will it keep more people out of the hallways? ,What would it be used for? We also learned about management and budgeting. We completely renewed it from the paint colors which were chosen by a survey done by students. We brought furniture to go in the room to make it more comfortable and inviting. We purchased games that we thought students would like to play on their free time. We fundraised twice a week to be able to afford all of this stuff. In the beginning we started off with selling ice cream one day and pizza another but the pizza wasn’t making enough money so we stopped that. Towards the end we wanted to add something new to the ice cream. We chose to sell waffles and ice cream, and it was a big success. We also chose to leave something to remember the first graduating class by putting their hand-prints on one the walls in the cafe.

1. Arroberts922. "Homelessness in Philadelphia." YouTube. YouTube, 19 Jan. 2011. Web. 07 Feb. 2017. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0_PcHS5_gs>.

• This source provides information about the perspective of different residents of philadelphia regarding the homelessness that is going on in their city. We selected this source because it provides some ideas on how the style of the documentary can be made. It also helps me with trying to figure out what types of questions we should be researching, and even figure out where the direction of my project will lead to. One limitation to this source is the fact that it does not reflect the vision we have for this project, and seems like any other typical documentary when you just interview random people. It is not necessarily as successful at catching attention as we would like for our documentary to be.

2. "Facts on Homelessness." Project HOME. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Feb. 2017. <https://projecthome.org/about/facts-homelessness>.

• This source provides information about the statistics of the amount of homelessness in Philadelphia. This is very helpful due to the fact that I am trying to spread awareness of the amount of homelessness in Philadelphia, and how everyone has different reasons for why they are in the position they are in. It isn’t just single homeless people, but in some cases there are families that are stuck having to live in their car, or sleeping on the train, or even at the train station. This website covers a lot of information including  the circumstances that the majority of the homeless are in. One limitation of this source is that it is only estimates of the amount of homeless. So the number could have risen, or fallen during the time this information has been released.

3. Blt189. "Down and out (Homeless in Philly)." YouTube. YouTube, 18 Aug. 2011. Web. 07 Feb. 2017. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op2Bq6cNU5g>.

• This source provides a bit of information during the introduction in regards to facts on homelessness in Philadelphia. Except this video was made in 2011, and I am not sure if this is an accurate source. The main thing that I am able to get out of this source is being able to get a look on the director’s idea, and how he came across on trying to make this type of documentary. There are some things I liked about what he did, and there are some things I did not like. When making the documentary I will be sure to copy the things that I do, and avoid making the same mistakes he committed when editing/shooting the video.

4. Lattanzio, Morgan Zalot Vince. "Fighting for a Place to Call Home: The Silent Epidemic of Youth Homelessness." NBC 10 Philadelphia. NBC 10 Philadelphia, 07 Feb. 2017. Web. 07 Feb. 2017. <http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Fighting-for-a-Home-The-Silent-Epidemic-of-Youth-Homelessness-332250942.html>.

• This source provides information specifically on the youth that struggle with being homeless in the streets of Philadelphia. The article not only provides statistics on what the homeless youth would typically do if they had no where to stay, but 5 different interviews on the lives of 5 homeless young people. I found this source useful because it is definitely the source that has come closest to being able to accomplish what I have in my mind/my vision for the documentary.

5.   | , Jared Brey. "Philly to Focus Outreach to Homeless on Center City "Hotspots"." Philadelphia Magazine. N.p., 18 May 2016. Web. 07 Feb. 2017. <http://www.phillymag.com/citified/2016/05/16/philadelphia-homeless-center-city/>.

• This source provides information about what the city of Philadelphia has tried to do in regards to the amount of homelessness. It brings up how the Jim Kenney administration had a plan to help get the homeless off the streets. Except the thing that is wrong with this article is that it was written on May 16, 2016. In about 3 months it would be a year since the article was made. Reading this article it made me feel like instead of fixing the homeless problem it has just been swept under the carpet. Instead of finding homes, and shelters, the homeless are just straight up being pushed out of our city.

6. "Homeless Advocacy Project - Free legal help for homeless individuals and families." Homeless Advocacy Project - Free legal help for homeless individuals and families. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Feb. 2017. <http://www.homelessadvocacyproject.org/>.

• This source provides information about an organization that helps out the homeless. I don’t want to just present the problem in the documentary, but be able to provide somewhat of a solution. If I am able to get at least one person’s sympathy, and get at least one person wondering on how they could help the cause, I have achieved my goal. It is for that one person that I would include this source. The only problem though is that this source does not focus in Philly, because it is a pretty big organization that covers more than just Philadelphia.

7."7 things you should know about homelessness in Philly." Generocity Philly. N.p., 13 June 2016. Web. 07 Feb. 2017. <http://generocity.org/philly/2016/05/24/homelessness-facts-poverty-youth-government/>.

• This source provides information about 7 facts on the homelessness in Philadelphia. It mentions topics that I didn’t even think to look at. Such as how in the LGBTQ community there is a major problem in regards to the youth that are left homeless. This is definitely a topic I would like to touch upon because of how popular the Gay rights movement has been. So to intertwine the 2 topics would be a nice way to look at homelessness from a whole new perspective.

8. "HomelessShelterDirectory." Philadelphia Homeless Shelters and Services - philadelphia PA Homeless Shelters - philadelphia Pennsylvania Homeless Shelters. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Feb. 2017. <http://www.homelessshelterdirectory.org/cgi-bin/id/city.cgi?city=philadelphia&state=PA>.

• This source provides information on the amount of shelters that there are in Philadelphia, as well as their location. The reason I would like to search for information like this is because I don’t want to just interview the homeless, but be able to provide at least a little help by providing them with information on what they can do to help themselves. Hopefully this would influence others to do the same, and simply help out the homeless by providing simple information.

9. https://www.nlchp.org/documents/Homeless_Stats_Fact_Sheet

• This source provides information about the laws regarding homelessness, and poverty in the nation. As I read through the source it seems very professional, and reliable. It provides details on homelessness going way back. Finding this source makes me want to branch out more towards spreading information that is national, and not just talk about the city of Philadelphia, because although it is a situation in Philadelphia it does affect the rest of the nation as well.

10. "Philadelphia unveils new, proactive outreach program for homeless." PhillyVoice. N.p., 16 May 2016. Web. 07 Feb. 2017. <http://www.phillyvoice.com/philadelphia-unveils-new-outreach-program-homeless/>.

• This article explains that there is apparently a new outreach program created by the city of Philadelphia. It talks about the story of a man they helped, and although he claimed to be homeless it had turned out he could return home whenever he pleased. This is another point I would like to bring out. Most of the time it is the fault of the person themself that they are in that position. Except that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve help. A limitation to this source is that it is from last year on May 16. It is unknown of any other cases in which they were able to help anyone out from this year. So I can not necessarily say this is a successful Philadelphia program.

For my capstone project, I really wanted to create something that would have a lasting impact on the SLA@Beeber community, even after I have left it. So after a lot of intense trial and error, I decided that my final capstone project would be a mentorship program between the SLA@Beeber High School and SLA Middle School. This entailed several high school students ranging from freshmen all the way to seniors going every wednesday to the middle school which like our school is very new and currently only has one class of fifth graders. I not only created and organized this program throughout the year, but I also mentored one of the middle school students. This program started up in February and took place every wednesday. The mentors and mentees were able to create and sustain a supportive and trusting relationship with one another This helped the mentors later in the program when working on improving the mentees social and academic skills, which were in need of repair given their lack of experience with the SLA Model and its core values. The mentors were also asked to fill out a journal entry and questionnaire about what they did each session.The end product was a video compilation that includes interviews from the mentees and mentors, as well as pictures taken throughout the program. I have also created a guide book for anyone who would like to take this program over next year.

(This program also acted as mini course and internship.)

-Does peer mediation cut back on student on student confrontation?

-How do students respond to student mentors rather than adult ones?

-Do students feel uncomfortable relaying their problems with authority figures?

-How much does student voice matter school authorities?

Research:

-Mediation and mentorship skills

-Ways to create a successful team and legacy program

Collaboration:

-Work with JT to see if our programs can cross paths at any point

-Work with Ms. Lawson to solve problems

-Teachers at SLA Middle School (Ms. Ironside)

-Get outside leaders of college or after school mentorship programs to teach our student mentors

Presentation:

-A physical and electronic instruction manual/guide book for how to successfully run the student mentorship/peer mediation program to represent my reflection for what worked and what didn’t work throughout the project.

-A reflective essay on my experiences throughout the year as well as a collection of organized notes taken every mentorship session to chart my progress throughout the year.

UPDATE

-Over the course of this capstone, I had come to realize that the best way to depict my project’s  successes as well as its defeats, was to create a video with testimonials from both mentors and mentees. This will replace the reflective essay and subsequent notes.

Reflection:

During the course of this capstone I realized that when you are starting a project like this with the intention of making it last after you are gone, there is going to be a lot of mistakes made. I for one can say that I probably did more things wrong than right in the very beginning. In the end though I think that both the mentees and mentors felt as though they got something significant out of the program and will treasure the experience for a very long time.