After almost 24 hours of brainstorming, students pitched their ideas to help people in need in the community.
Blankets with information and maps printed on it for the homeless, and a project to build adjustable shelves at the Salvation Army rose to the top of the competition.
With so many innovative ideas — from hydration stations and community information bulletins — it was hard for judges to select the winners, though.
There were two topics for the eight groups of students presenting their ideas at O’Gorman High School.
Specialist High Skill Major construction students looked at how to redesign the Salvation Army drop off centre to maximize donation space. Health and Wellness students were tasked with increasing awareness of the available wrap around services for Timmins families/people in need.
“Trying to select a winner and all four of the health and wellness ones were top notch and were projects that showed a lot of innovation and creativity. Just in their scope of picking apart different things that were presented to them to come up with the product, it was very difficult to select one because they were all very good,” said Doug Basso, Health and Wellness lead.
The Innovation Creativity Entrepreneurship Challenge started yesterday.
Timmins Mayor Steve Black talked to students to give them an idea of the issues that local families face and identify the types of supports needed.
Afterwards, the groups brainstormed and came up with ideas to present at a Dragon’s Den-type situation to a panel of judges.
“Our project was the Caring Cover, it’s a blanket that we want to be printed on so one side will have the information about homeless shelters and where their hours are and where they’re located in Timmins,” explained Hailey Vaillancourt, whose group won the Health and Wellness challenge.
“Then on the other side we want a map of Timmins and South Porcupine with those places on the map and then needles disposal boxes and places around Timmins like the police station and the library and other information.”
After hearing the mayor talk yesterday, she said they took away that people with mental disabilities need something with information that’s easy for them to access.
They came up with the blanket because it’s easy to access and is useful.
“It’s warm, it’s a pillow, it can be used for multiple things and it’s easily carried,” she said.
On the construction side, the winning group pitched a project for storage space with adjustable shelves, and making use of the space by having table fold into the shelves.
Sean Courville is part of the group to come up with the idea.
While he said their design started taking shape after yesterday’s presentation it wasn’t until their teacher pointed out the moveable shelves in the library today that something clicked.
“Instead of making specific shelves for boots and specific shelves for this, we can have it vary,” he said.
From the start, he said they all agreed on a unique folding table.
“And as soon as he said folding table, we all instantly thought ‘oh folding table, alright, to save room instead of just sitting there all the time it can fold into the wall, into the shelf,” said Courville.
Having the Specialist High Skill Major students come up with ideas for community partners is an annual undertaking.
Every year, Basso said they try to find new partners, with this year’s being the City of Timmins, Salvation Army and Project Love.
Now that the top projects have been selected, the students will get to see them come to life.
“It’s got that community aspect in it too, so the construction guys are going to actually build the distribution centre for Salvation Army. We’re going to do our best to get something done for getting the word out from the Health and Wellness students perspective with the blanket and try to develop that. So hopefully we get a community sponsor to help us or to support some of the costs that go with it,” said Basso.
“Worst case scenario is we come up with a prototype, create a prototype and then hopefully one of the coalitions or someone in town will say ‘you know what that’s a really good idea, we’re going to add to it and we’re going to try and run with that.'”
