The total amount of strongly disagrees and disagrees grew by 57%. The amount of agrees and strongly agrees decreased by 64%. This means that the students generally started to believe that disabled individuals are not inferior to them.
This shows that this challenge can be changed for the better. It also reinforces the fact that the root cause is lack of information. Just by giving people more information, their opinions started to change. If we only keep informing people, soon my vision will become reality.
Throughout this project, I was the most stressed I’ve ever been. On a daily basis, I wanted to slam my head on the keyboard. However much I say I hate it, it was really the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. This is a topic that is extremely important to me and I was able to do something about it. I feel that I really made a meaningful impact on the world.
Intervention Plan
I came up with 4 possible interventions to do: to hold a workshop about my topic, create and distribute brochures, create and promote a website, and to teach disabled people how to respond to the issue.
(I did not choose the intervention to teach disabled people to respond to issue as an option because I believe they do not know how to. I chose it because I needed four possible interventions. This intervention got the lowest score because it did not even relate to the issue and it seemed to be feeding the problem rather than fixing it.)
I judged all these topics based on five categories: level of effort it would require, whether people would respond, the number of people it would affect, if it’s possible, and if it directly addresses the issue. Holding a workshop won the most points and was deemed the most effective. I created a presentation that discussed misconceptions made about disabled people, and disproved them. I presented to an 8th grade class at Morris K. Udall Middle School. Before the presentation, I gave them a survey that included the same stereotypes I would be discussing and asked them to rate from strongly agree to strongly disagree on how they felt about the statement. Some of these included: disabled people are helpless, cannot lead a fulfilling life, and are helpless and dependent. After giving the workshop, I gave the same survey and the results had changed dramatically.
Feature Story
Continued!
Results