Eagle Scout Project
As part of my scouting career in Boy Scouts, I was tasked with completing a project for my community in order to both improve my community through volunteer service and to demonstrate the skills I had learned during my career. One of these main skills was to demonstrate leadership and project management by leading my fellow scouts through the projects in order to reach the final goal.
For my project I chose to assist the local elementary school with a new idea they had to keep the kids more engaged during learning. The plan was to have outdoor classroom space so that the students could learn both out in the fresh air but also about the weather, nature, gardening, and wildlife up close and not from a textbook. To facilitate this, I worked with them to design collapsible picnic tables that were ADA accessible, as this was a concern and detriment to buying premade tables, and a new gate for ADA accessibility to their small garden. What was not in initial planning, however, was the addition of safety railings to a large bridge along the school's small nature trail, and a full replacement of a second small bridge further along the trail.
The full project was completed by April of my junior year of high school (2016) utilizing approximately 560-man hours and close to 25 scouts and 10 adults. The project was presented later that month to the entirety of the school board and to part of the community as a whole during a dedication ceremony. As of August 2022, the project is still in use as it was intended and, other than cleaning up some vandalism, requires no maintenance or upkeep.