8th Grade Community Projects | McAuliffe International School

As an IB capstone project for our 8th graders, our 8th Grade Community Project challenges 8th graders to identify a community need, work to address that need, and then present their project to parents and teachers.

Please check out some of the 2018-19 projects below for an example of the great things McAuliffe students are doing! Check back in Spring, 2020 for this years projects.

8th Grade Book Drive for Reach Out and Read

We are Ana Federico, Darby Jones, and Claire Fontenot, and we are hosting a book drive from this week to Friday, March 8. This book drive has been created to support the Reach out and Read program, which can be found here. We would greatly appreciate it if you could find new and gently used books from your houses that are designated for children under the age of 10 and give them to your middle schooler, so that they can put them in the boxes that we have put in their red day advisory classes. This will benefit the children in clinics and allow their families gain access to books that they wouldn’t already have. Early childhood literacy can improve a child’s vocabulary, quality of life, and grades overall throughout a child’s entire life. Thank you for your donation!!

Autism Awareness

Our names are Kaia Havely and Helen Miller, and we are eighth graders working on our MYP community project. For this project, we are working on raising awareness on the subject of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We would be thrilled if you would take a personal interest in this subject the same way we have, and help advocate for both students and adults with autism in your community. As beneficial and important any bit of help can be, one of the best ways to make a difference is to raise awareness and spread factually correct information to others. Here is some information we have compiled on this topic–please contribute to this cause and help to make an impact where it matters.

Ban Pet Retail Stores in Colorado – Sign Our Petition

We are a group of eighth graders who are advocating for the ban on the sale of commercially bred dogs in pet retail stores in Colorado. Pet retail stores get some of their puppies from breeders who use inhumane breeding practices (puppy mills), so we are trying to advocate for a law similar to California where pet stores can only get their animals from shelters and rescue organizations. We have noticed that pets in pet retail stores are often sick from inhumane commercial breeding practices, and are abused. Around ⅗ of pet retail stores get their animals from puppy mills! Puppy mills abuse their animals, so pet retail stores are supporting puppy mills. Please sign this change.org petition to let Colorado legislators know that the citizens of Colorado demand that they take action so the animals don’t have to suffer. Thanks Maddie, Bella, and Maya

Bee Stuff For Sale to Benefit Vine Street Farms

We are Jack Antonson and Mariah Rosensweig and for our community project we are selling “bee” products after school today and tomorrow at the south entrance. We are working with a local bee keeper at Vine Street Farms to help the honey bees in our community. Attached is a picture of what we selling as well as I list below.

Lip Balm – Moisturizing lip balm with beeswax, vitamin E, and coca butter
Honey Oatmeal Scrub Bar – Made with goat’s milk and honey. Includes kaolin clay and oatmeal as an exfoliant on the rougher side of the bars.
Balsam and Basil Soap – Made with beeswax, honey, balsam oil, and homegrown, dried basil.
Honey – Local, raw wildflower honey sourced from hives located all around Park Hill and northeast Denver.

Helping Refugees Make A Home

For our community project, we are working with refugees and have partnered with the African Community Center of Denver. We are going to donate certain items to the organization that they have asked for in order to improve the lives of refugees who are just arriving in the United States. We were hoping that you would be willing to help us out by participating in a drive to collect and donate these items.You can bring in the items on our list and drop them off during school in Mrs. Beardshear’s office where we will have a box where you can put your item. The drive will take place February 19th through March 8th. For each item that you drop off in the donation box, you can write your name on a ticket that will be entered into a drawing on March 8th. We will pull 9 names, and those students will win high school gear. Thanks Nell Edstrom, Quynh Mackenzie, Maggie Moroney

Items Needed: Rice, Dry pinto beans, Lentils, Spaghetti, Vegetable oil, Sugar, Salt, Flour, Tea, Tomato sauce/canned tomatoes

Native American Education Assistance

We are 8th-grade students at McAuliffe International School here in Denver. As part of our final year of middle school, we are asked to complete a service project in our community. We choose to raise money for The Boys and Girls Club of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe. We are holding an online auction and 100% of the proceeds will go to the non-profit. You will find the auction link here to either bid or make a one-time donation.

For more information on our project and why we wanted to help Native American students, click here.

Soles4Soles Shoe Drive

We are Emma Dudley, Satiene Keiffer and Madeline Rodgers and we are hosting a shoe drive for our community project. Our shoe drive will last from Thursday February 28th to Wednesday March 13th. We would like gently worn shoes that can be in any size or for any gender. These shoes will go to Soles4Souls which collects shoes and gives them to those in poverty. The goal of Soles4Souls is to help those in poverty get and sustain a job. There will be a couple boxes on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd floor. Teachers are also welcome to donate shoes. Thank you!

Straw Conservation

Hello, we are 8th graders Ella and Elin and our community project is about the conservation of plastic straws in the Park Hill neighborhood. We created a website with a bunch of interesting facts about the problem, so it would help to raise awareness about the problem at hand. We wanted our McAuliffe community to be more aware of the problem, the URL is here. We hope you will take a look! Thanks so much!

Teen Mental Health Awareness

We are Camdyn, Sarah, and Delaney and our goal is to increase awareness around mental health and help parents support their students. Please read our letter to parents here.

Zero Waste Project

Hi my name is Susie and for my Community project I’m focusing on trying to raise awareness on reducing waste. “More than 175 million tons of garbage reaches landfills every year in the US contributing to the toxic wasteland and rising levels.” Also there are many ways you as a person can help these issues. I want to bring awareness to the subject because if we don’t do anything it will get worse: more animals will be harmed and we will get bigger landfills with more toxins. Even just one person can help solve this problem. You can help by buying a reusable cup at Starbucks and reusing it instead of throwing away plastic cups every time or instead of plastic toothbrushes you can use bamboo toothbrushes. Here are some facts you should know. There are many ways you can help solve this big problem. Thank you for reading this!