Essential Question: How can communities stay engaged virtually during a global pandemic?
Statement of Definition: Explore how communities can continue being active during a global pandemic limiting social interactions to solely virtual ones. To answer my question, I will be continuing to engage in my various communities such as jGirls magazine, my synagogue’s teen leadership program (Project Chaverim), and my track team and evaluate how these limitations are shaping them.
Overview: As COVID-19’s impact on our daily lives and social interactions is becoming increasingly significant, the communities I am a part of are also becoming more important in maintaining a sense of normalcy and support during an overwhelming and unfamiliar time. Over the past couple of weeks, continuing to engage in these communities has helped me adjust to and manage all of the changes to my academic and social lives. Therefore, I want to spend third trimester exploring how these communities can most effectively engage its members virtually and while the world is dealing with many unknowns. I will focus on three of my circles: jGirls magazine, Project Chaverim, and the track team. jGirls is an online magazine that I am on the editorial board for. Since the editors come from all over the country, we have always used zoom and virtual events to foster our community. Continuing my work with them, and planning other events/activities to further engage, will help me evaluate my question. Project Chaverim is both a group that is meant to teach the teens about Jewish topics, and how to lead the younger Hebrew school students in learning as well. Since we now have to do these things virtually, we have to develop new methods to teach and keep each other motivated to learn new things that are happening in the world. Experimenting with different activities/resources to use to continue teaching and learning in this group will also help answer my question. Lastly, my track team is continuing to be a community despite the Spring athletic seasons discontinuing by the school as of now. Since this group is a form of support and socializing for its members, and keeping active is important during quarantine, I want to help figure out how we can continue being a community without training together and competing as a team. I will also investigate how communities are coming together on social media to support each other/address issues created by COVID-19, and survey LREI students/teachers/administrators about COVID-19’s impact on their communities. In this project, I will be using creativity and citizenship because I will have to think of new ways to continue being active in the world during a global pandemic.
How will you measure your success?: I will measure my success by evaluating whether these communities are weakening or becoming stronger through the different activities/events/other things we do. I hope that if this is to be successful, each of the members of these groups will be supported and continue to have a social group to help each other get through a difficult and often distressing time.
Resource List:
- jGirls resources (we have been using online resources to meet before COVID-19 so I can bring these to other groups)
- Adults in charge of the magazine
- Speakers who’ve run sessions/workshops for the editors
- Databases
- Social media/facebook groups for observational data
- surveys/interviews
- Karyn
- Peter Heinz
- Look at how other sports teams (more professional ones) have been continuing to train virtually
- BBYO on demand
- My own experiences
- https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/how-to-build-and-maintain-an-engaged-online-community
- https://blog.americansforthearts.org/2020/03/25/community-engagement-in-the-time-of-covid-19
- https://politicalsciencenow.com/promoting-civic-literacy-and-engagement-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/
- https://www.ccl.org/coronavirus-resources/
Daily Plan/Schedule: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10XSqKT57GiHIBjKB8TtiBrJgQysh6B4OCh02Q7c3cvU/edit#gid=2046112792
Documentation Plan: I will be updating the Senior Project blog twice a week with the different actions I’ve taken to engage my communities. I will also explain what I’ve observed about how the pandemic is impacting my communities and note what has seemed to be working or not working in continuing to keep these groups active. As of now, I see my final product being a personal essay about how I’ve observed/felt community has been impacted by COVID-19, so I will also be keeping separate more personal reflections to prepare for that.
Material Needs: Access to databases.
Backup Plan: If my project doesn’t go to plan, or I need to get more hours, I will search for online classes and become more involved in these communities by taking on other roles.