Tomas,

Evaluation of the project

„ Did your action meet your goal? What evidence can you provide to demonstrate the
level of success that you feel you have achieved?
our Goal in Italy was :Our goal is to support an organization, participate in the events and
activities they host with disabled children and possibly offer them additional ones, organized
by ourselves. Unfortunately neither of those organizations we contacted responded so we
decided to host our own activity in the school which was Paralimpics . So we achieved our
goal in the sense of making our own activity but in the other sense we didn't reach our goal
which was to collaborate with an organization . Our Action went as expected. Our Activities
with the school children were successful.The kids really enjoyed playing like a disabled
person and most of them said it was very hard . In the end of our activities the kids started to
respect the disabled community more . The game that they liked the most was dodgeball
without limbs . If someone got hit by a ball they lose a limb , if they get hit 2 times they lose
another limb , if they get hit 3 times they lose another limb and when they get hit 4 times they
are out of the game . On our first activity with the grade 7 we played a 100 meters race with
one leg. At the end of the race everyone enjoyed it, they even wanted to do another race ,
the winner got a reward and at the end we got a lot of good feedback . Something that went
wrong was that we wanted to do basketball with wheelchairs and the kids were very
excited.Unfortunately we couldn't bring the wheel chairs to the basketball court because the
court couldn't get damaged . In general the project went very well and the boys and girls of
ISM enjoyed them selfes and now understand more about the disabled community .

proof that we achieved our goal

this is a picture that proves that we achieved our goal . This picture was taken in grade 6
when we created our own activity.

„ Did you address the need in the community? What has been the impact of your
project on the community? For this reflection to be meaningful (and credible), ask
a member of that community for their feedback.
Through our Community service we tried to stress the idea and emphasize the toughness and the differences in
the lifestyle and common activities that we do during the day, that we take for granted. We impacted and set a
mind-foundation on some classes from the PYP and MYP that we had the fortune to work with, and show them
how it would be if they had a certain disability. Our impact was not drastic and certainly did not go as deep as
some studies and certain professionals can give out, but in my opinion there was a change in the classes, we
asked a few students from various classes about their opinions on how it felt to have a certain disability and they
said that they did personally gain a bit more respect towards disabled people and especially athletes with
disabilities. All of this was done, not only because it is a vital problem in the modern era, but also because it is a
subject we personally care about, we ourselves truly wish that our project showed the younger classes an
example of how hard it is, because personally we was really intrigued about how little people care about athletes
with disabilities no matter the amount of hard work they put in. But as a fact we do think that we left a mark in the
younger classes because for many students that said they did realise the toughness, some also responded to our
short questions about our project, saying that it was “meaningfull”, and we even had a student from grade seven
say that our project had such an impact on them, they would even try to follow “disability” as their community
project too. Other feedback that we received consisted of comments about how we could improve our project
such as rewards, more games and a suggestion to contact a disabled person and try to organise a small speech
or show the younger students what it truly is from their perspective. But our overall feedback was very positive
and the whole project was very enjoyable for us and for the students.

What would you do differently if you could do your action again? How could the project be improved?

We think that our project went well in terms of our ideas, and the activity we managed to set up for classes in MYP and the PYP,
The only thing that we could have changed is maybe to contact more organizations, so we have more chances to meet and
have a conversation with the disabled kids, and interact with them. The only things that we could have changed is maybe the
time management, and done the activity earlier, so we could have more time to complete the things such as this reflection, and
the presentation not in the last minute, so we could have done everything in advance and to be ready to do everything on time
and not last second. Another thing we could have changed is the meetings with our mentors, and we could have done them
more often, so we could get more advice on how to do the project later. Another thing that we could have changed is the
management of the classes, and if we had more wheelchairs we could have done races with wheelchairs, because this the most
important, and the most prestigious competition in the paralympics. Another thing we could have done is do it with more classes
so that we could spread more awareness of how the disabled people play sports, and how they manage in their daily lives. The
last thing we could have done is to create a competition, where different classes will pay money to join. There are a lot of things
we could have changed, but we liked the way things turned out, for us.

Stefan Fotev personal reflection

During this service learning project I learned what it is to be a person with disabilities and what their experience
everyday, so with different classes we did small paralympics so that, they could and I could experience what it is
to be a person with disability, and I learned what these people go through everyday, another important thing that I
learn is to never give up, as we first experience failure when trying to contact a organization, then we came up
with a different strategy and this was the paralympics and this is what we did. There was something that I would
not usually do and this is to plan such a massive thing for all the grades, when we presented I was the one who
would take pictures, Stefan will present and Tomas will just stay there and look beautiful. We tried to contact an
organization but it did not matter because they did not respond to us, and so we had to come up with an original
idea for us. So we came up with the idea of creating a paralympics to raise awareness as we could not help that
community directly, because of covid and for other reasons, the idea for the paralympics us with the help of
Miss Sironi and our very important mentor. During this community project I learned a lot of things,
most of them are the ATL’s skills. The one that I perfect the most is the ATL skill of time management.
This is the one that I developed during the project because you had to organize your time perfectly so
you have time to do everything you are supposed to do and fit the deadlines. Another ATL skill that I
improved is the communication skill . I improved because you had to communicate a lot during this
project. For example we had to communicate a lot with our mentor and our mentor teacher, and with
different organizations, and when the companies did not respond, we had to present our project to
kids, in PE classes to raise awareness of our project and what these people experience everyday.
WE did not manage to meet our goal, because of the organizations and other problems and so we had
to think of alternate ideas, to help or to raise awareness for that community, and so we had our idea. I
also developed some besial lreaner profile skills such as inquirers, because we had to spend some
time researching about the problem of that needed community and also spend some time recherching
what paralympics is all about.

Tomas personal reflection : Yes I have learned how to interact with different people . I Really
learned that disability is a real problem . It changed my point of view about disabled people
and I am blessed to be able to do a community project about this , when youre doing this
project you can't give up at first try it . I wouldn't normally contact a company and we did. The
real problem was that because of covid we couldn't work physically with the disabled
community so we thought of doing paralympics . I Am very timid and speaking to other
classes was very difficult for me and my colleagues present in other classes . The project
made me better in my communication skills because after presenting for one class I felt the
confidence to present to other classes. I thought that I had to work with the community of the
disabled to make an impact but actually you can make an impact by teaching younger
students about disability. I felt very inspired from the start because one of my best friends is
disableed and I wanted to know more about disabilities and also more about him. During the
project I felt worried because we struggled to finish the action in time. I also felt admired
when I received the feedback from the students that we worked with and it seemed that they
enjoyed doing paralympics a lot . I have more knowledge when it comes to the disabled
community . I understand why they behave in certain ways and why they act in different ways
due to my research i know how to behave in front of a diabled person it's important to know
because a disabled person gets hurt easily During this project we developed our
communication skills because thought out the project we had to communicate with teachers ,
students and organizations by that our communication skills are perfect . During this project
we also developed our thinking skills because we had to think of the words we used while
writing to organizations and we also improved our critical thinking by refusing ideas because
they might not be the best and when something goes wrong you have to have critical thinking
in those situations . During this project we improved our risk - takers skills because we had to
take risks to reach our goal .
Stefan Doynov personal reflection :

Our community project can be titled a “success” from a general point of view as we did
ensure to deliver the message and spread awareness through the students of the lower
grades through our action, but there are many things that we could have done differently that
could have benefitted the final outcome and the pressure of the project throughout the many
months it lasted. Our project started off with the idea of contacting an organization that was
close to our school or in Monza. But our plans had to change because we did not get a
response from the organizations we contacted so we had to change it to demonstrating and
engaging students in activities which show how hard it is to live with disabilities. If i had the
opportunity to do our action all over, i would certainly work on my personal time
management, this has been a problem for myself for a very long time and especially in this
project i discovered as to how much it can impact the whole group if i did not manage my
time to be productive and on point. One thing that we could all improve as a group was our
process journal and note taking throughout the whole project. We had to be reminded many
times by our tutor Gaia Fornoni to keep track of every single thing that happens throughout
the project and record it in a shared document. During the first phase of the whole
community project we also were struggling to think of an action that would be meaningful to
the community and to ourselves, we could have spoken with more people for ideas and could
have created a mind map of our possibilities and the given time and resources. Because of
the fact that we had to change our actions to a whole other idea we were pushed back and
we had to organize a new small event, preferably in the school, this took us a lot of time and
in my opinion much more than it should have, which in the end led to us having a very small
amount of time for our submissions such as our presentation and the reflections, both
personal and group one. Another thing we could have done differently was our action itself,
given the feedback that we received from the students that we asked, we could have
incorporated more games, possible rewards and even a person with a disability to come
teach the students about how they themselves had to do certain things. As an end project we
could have done many things better, but the important thing is that now with the experience
from our community project I feel more confident in the fact that I will not be letting the same
mistakes happen again in any project or task.