Don't Panic Grow Organic

I helped a group of 7th-grade students document and fulfill the requirements of a grant they were awarded. The intention of the grant was to promote the group’s findings in hope of cultivating a positive impact on their community. In order to do that, I created a website for documentation, outreach, and Q&A. Additionally, I helped mentor the group on budgeting, planning, attended events to help carry materials, and took photos and videos as seen on the website.

About the Team

The Lanikai Science Squad—four 7th grade students who formed an Ecybermission science team— identified the community problem: 98% of Hawaii farms are using synthetic pesticides on their crops. To protect the aina, they found a more natural alternative to synthetic pesticides by making their own organic pest control. They discovered a low-cost replacement for synthetic pesticide at $.13 per ounce, with natural ingredients including garlic and Hawaiian chili pepper.

The Lanikai Science Squad competed in the Army Education Outreach Program (AEOP)’s eCyberMission Competition (ECM) they won 7th-grade first place nationally, and a grant to help spread their findings to their community.

The Website

To help the girls stay organized and document their progress for the grant, I created and managed the website dontpanicgroworganic.org with wordpress.com. The site was a collection of the group’s accomplishments of winning first places nationally, the findings of their project, and most of all, the outreach they did with their community. Outreach including meeting with government officials, the Kokua Foundation, and attending events. Through this experience, I helped guide the students step by step with budget planning and time management. I also took videos and photos at the events, and acted as an extra pair of hands to carry posters, brochures, and pass out their Organic Garden Starter Kits.

The grant that paid for the cite domain has since ended and so has the WordPress subscription. In order to preserve the hard work of these students, I exported the contents of the WordPress site to Blogger, Google’s blogging platform. Some of the original page configurations were not transferable. For example, there was a WordPress menu with customizable pages. To preserve the information on those pages, I created new and the last ever post, that will remain at the top of the homepage acting as a menu. There were also videos that were not portable and are now unavailable on the new site. You can view the exported website here.