Organizations Involved

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On April 23rd, 2022, the Chinese American Association of Lexington (CAAL) Youth STEAM Team sent 3 representatives–Baoren Liu, David Zhao, and William Zhang–to showcase the organization’s past and ongoing civic service projects and initiatives to compete for a helpful grant offered by the Emerging Leaders in Civic Action Mini-Grant Pitching Event. The event was organized by the Civic Leadership Academy, a national organization dedicated towards fostering passionate young leaders to design and run community initiatives centered around the principles of civic engagement and community reformations. The grant included an initial seed fund of $500, mentor-led workshops on 6/25/2022, 7/23/2022, and 8/20/2022, along with additional guidance and leadership development training sessions. Our team was also invited to showcase our completed projects in the Annual Emerging Leaders in Civic Action Showcase event (in collaboration with the United Chinese Americans, or UCA) from July 14-16, 2022.

Here are the slides we presented in the competition: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TtKvfLGBHQKsAJv9c1w6QUHX5C7PVk1O7agieTLd6c4/edit?usp=sharing

Preparation

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Preparation for the presentation began in early February of 2022, when the team met together numerous times to devise optimal pre-screening round application paragraphs for the subteams’ various community impact-based projects. This was followed by preparation of a set of slides to showcase the team’s accomplishments and ongoing initiatives, highlighting the following projects:

• Rediscovering Lexington’s Heroes (In collaboration with the Lexington Town Government)
• Spoken Wise (In collaboration with the Lexington Cary Memorial Library)
• Lunar Arts Website Restoration (In collaboration with New Moon International)
  
  

The team also decided on a split-project presentation format, opening up with a brief overview of all the initiatives organized by the subteams of the CAAL Youth STEAM Team organization.

This was subsequently added on by detailed slides explaining the actionable steps taken and planned by each individual subteam on their respective projects, along with the overarching objectives of the respective subteams on their community impact-centered projects.

The prepared slides and showcase section concluded with a riveting description of how the projects would impact the community, and the presenting members all explained how the grant funds and mentorship/leadership training sessions would help them further their ambitious community reformation goals.

Presentation (and Awards)

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Presentation day, as always, was intensive and fast-paced, with the judges asking difficult questions for the team to answer and explain their well-planned solutions to. There were numerous good points raised by the grant application judges in the presentations given by all teams to ensure a rigorously decided result for the grant award and placements. At the end of the presentation, David, Baoren, and William all believed that the CAAL Youth STEAM Team showcased the full extent of their community outreach projects and their outstanding applications of various software development skill sets in creating change and reformation in their community. A few weeks later, results were released for the Emerging Leaders in Civic Action Mini-Grant Pitching Event.

The CAAL Youth STEAM Team had won the 1st place award in the placements, and had become the recipient of the 2022 Emerging Leaders in Civic Action Grant, enabling the organization to further its initiatives in utilizing the technologies of the information age to build extraordinary tools to help improve the community of Lexington and beyond. We would like to extend its thanks to the Civic Leadership Academy and its affiliates for providing this unique opportunity for the CAAL Youth STEAM Team, and hope that this opportunity will help us aid the community even further in providing digital solutions to various public works initiatives of the team.

On April 18, 2022, our team attended the Patriots Day parade in Lexington.

The Lexington Youth STEAM Team participated in the 2022 Patriots Day Parade with the aim of spreading their contributions to the community. David Zhao, Cassidy Xu and Ashley Zhang helped hold advertising banners for local businesses, while William Zhang and Kevin Zhu volunteered to hold the CAAL banner. Irene Gao and Ethan Shao proudly held the team’s poster. The atmosphere was lively and invigorating as the STEAM Team and other members of CAAL were showered with applause from the audience.

The team lead for this activity was Ivy Tang, who communicated with the team and designed the team poster with the help of her friend Hannah Guo. They incorporated aspects of the American flag in the poster, and added names of the team’s past projects in flowers along with a computer. This symbolized the blooming of contributions to the community with the aid of technology. Ultimately, the team was able to successfully publicize themselves and convey the hard work of each member.