Hope’s In Academy: Alina’s Experience

“As a group, we learned that with dedication and commitment, we can reach even beyond our goal to make Barrington High school plastic-free.”

-Alina Khan, Sophomore at BHS

Below is a reflection from Alina, a student from the first graduating class of the Hope’s In Academy. The Hope’s In Academy is a leadership development program for Freshmen in District 220. The program teaches students about nonprofit management, social impact, and leadership. Each group within the program created a service project to put their knowledge to the test. Next school year, we will welcome the second class of the Hope’s In Academy thanks to a grant from the Barrington Area Community Foundation. Alina’s insightful thoughts are below:

My name is Alina Khan and I am a sophomore at Barrington High school. The project my group and I decided to create was based around reducing plastic waste at school. We chose this because as a group, we all were passionate about making the environment at school plastic-free. Also, we saw this service project as an opportunity to make an impact in our community by helping our peers understand how important it is to be conscious of plastic waste. As a group, we learned that with dedication and commitment, we can reach even beyond our goal to make Barrington High school plastic-free.

Although we started the project at the end of the year and not many classes participated in the project, we still were able to make a small impact and learn from what we did wrong and what to change so that we could improve in the years to come. This showed us that with more time and planning we could have spread the word to more peers and teachers at Barrington. To someone that is planning to run their own service project, make sure you have an organized schedule and planner as it will help you accomplish what to get done each day to achieve the biggest impact in your area/community. Also, you can base your service project on something that you love to do such as painting or playing a sport and research about how you can turn that idea into a form of community service. Finally, don’t be upset if not many people participate the first time you start a service project as this is an excellent learning opportunity on how you can make the project better the next time you do it 🙂

We thank the Barrington Area Community Foundation for empowering us to run the second year of the Hope’s In Academy.