What is NYAA?
A platform that helps young students develop hands-on and leadership skills. It is aimed to nurture young students by connecting them to their community while ensuring that they are able to live healthy and helpful lives.
Third Month Reflections
November
I think that so far I’ve been off to a pretty good start. I’ve been doing most of my activity in Tennis and Boxing. Though I aim to spend more time on tennis following the winter break. As of service, I think this time around as a leader, it’s a whole new experience. Being in charge comes with a lot of responsibility and so far it’s been fun. I’ve done about 4 hours of my community project as of now, I’m going out with friends to clean beaches on the east coast.
February
I’ve stayed consistent in terms of activity and service making sure to continue to work towards my goals. Unfortunately my community project group has been unable to to meet up recently however we plan to in a couple of weeks once again. Recently we’ve welcomed new grade 9 students to the service and have been teaching them how the service works and some of the skills they will need while working with tech.
May
While I have continued to work at imnproving my physical fitness unfortunately I haven’t been able to play much tennis as the tennis team is on off season and I don’t have access to courts at the moment. Despite this I am still boxing regularly every week and continue to see improvements in my physical fitness through that. I also am planning my Project week in June and am aiming to incorportate service and acitivity elements in it. One thing I enjoy is wood working and from my prior expeirence in beach cleanupos I knoiw that a lot of driftwood ends up on shores. I hope to take some of that wood home during a clean up session and make something out of it.
August
Community Project
To fulfill the criteria of a community project, a group of friends and myself got together and planned out beach clean-up visits on the east coast. We normally spent around two hours each time walking across the beach picking up trash. There was actually a lot more depth to the experience than just the menial task. We noticed trends in the trash we found and began to speculate exactly why those trends were occurring and how they could potentially be addressed using some of the sustainability concepts we’d learned in class. Below are photos of each visit alongside a short reflection.
Beach Clean-up 1
Reflection – This was our first time doing the beach clean up. Since we were able to book it through a government site, we were provided with equipment which included gloves, buckets, and tools to pick up trash. Immediately upon entering the beach we could see quite a bit of trash. As we walked we found a large number of plastic bags filled with food waste, cigarettes and a variety of other objects. What was interesting about the the bags with food was that a large majority of them had the grab food or Deliveroo logo on them. Clearly it is popular to order food to the beach. Unfortunately some people are leaving their waste there instead of taking it to a bin. We were able to walk about 3 kilometres up the beach before turning back and covering a new area. While the activity was very demanding due to the high humidity, we all felt a great degree of satisfaction at the end when we had collected all the trash together. Once it was disposed of we ate lunch nearby and went home.
Beach Clean-up 2
Reflection – We went to the same beach a couple of weeks later and walked the same route as the time before. Interestingly enough, this time we didn’t find much in terms of large pieces of trash. Instead we found lots of smaller pieces such as cigarettes and other items. We think that the reason we found so many cigarettes is because while regulations in the city are high regarding smoking, citizens are allowed to smoke on the beach and therefore the act has become incredibly popular. While it may seem like the quantity of trash we collected was lower this time, we actually collected much more in terms of pieces of trash. I was also able to find some old pieces of wood that I plan to used in a DT project.
Boxing Evidence
Project Week Reflection