This summer, many students from Deerfield Academy took part in service-based initiatives in their communities with the aid of grants provided by the Center of Service and Global Citizenship (CSGC). Among these students were Ana Vizitiv ’23, Isabelle Schwartz ’24, and Kevin Kim ’23.
The CSGC provides grants to students that are passionate about catalyzing change within their communities. They hope that this grant of up to 200 dollars will help students take a big step toward their goals. For smaller-scale projects, the CSGC also gives out microgrants that are open to applications throughout the year.
Vizitiv, who is from Moldova, was a new junior in the 2021-2022 school year. She recalled her struggles in humanities classes as an elementary school student, but she soon discovered her passion for STEM when she first took her middle-school physics class. She was very aware of the lack of support girls often received to go into the STEM field saying, “I decided that I need to fight for [girls in STEM] because there wasn’t really somebody to fight for me.” So far, she has used her $1,200 grant to accomplish two main projects over the summer.
First, Vizitiv published a STEM mystery guide for teens, an interactive guide incorporating various STEM topics into a murder mystery story. Last school year, she published four guides about chemistry, biology, physics, and computer science. This summer’s most recent mystery guide condenses all of these topics condensed into a storyline. Readers can solve puzzles such as decoding binary and exploring different chemical elements. Vizitiv hopes that this guide will offer girls a more approachable introduction to STEM, opening the door for them to discover a new passion.
Additionally, Vizitiv launched a website, gstemoldova.org, with various STEM resources for girls in Moldova over the summer. The page contains news and resources related to STEM as well as a space for teenage girls to publish their own articles about STEM topics. Vizitiv hopes this will help them spread awareness about their findings, while also boosting their confidence and motivating them to keep pursuing their passions.
This summer, Schwartz was granted $2,000 for Foundation Beauty—a project she founded in eighth grade during quarantine. Her goal for Foundation Beauty is to “spread access to makeup for teens across the world… because having hygiene and beauty products often comes secondary.” She stated that during the initial lockdown, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, “life was just really monotonous with online school, but I started to apply makeup for fun and it helped me to lift my mood. It also helped me to set a routine for me.”
Foundation Beauty seeks to donate makeup products to non-profit organizations in lower-income areas, and Schwartz’s CSGC grant allowed her to ship donations to destinations such as Texas and Uganda. Schwartz has also received makeup donations from major beauty companies such as Sephora, Fenty Beauty, and Shiseido.
Schwartz hopes that increasing access to makeup all over the world will boost people’s confidence in themselves. She said, “Seeing the reactions that we’ve gotten is a really special moment…and how such a small thing that I’m able to do makes them so happy.”
Kim, who hails from Los Angeles, brought to attention the needles and vomit that often litter the city’s streets. Kim stated, “I wanted to do something about it for a very long time, but I didn’t know what to do. So I started taking DEA courses.” The DEA, or Drug Enforcement Administration, and they provide students who want to help people with addiction with courses to educate them on the issue.
In addition to the $1500 from his CSGC grant, Kim received an additional $1000 from the Katy Textor Farmer Award, a grant given to a student whose proposal supports Deerfield’s core values, as seen by alumni Katy Farmer ’92. With the combined sum of $2,500, he was able to publish a book, make pins, and book time in meeting and seminar rooms. His book provides information on opioids and their dangers. So far, it has been distributed to 11 public libraries in California. Among these 11, four of them are within schools. Kim summed up his mission by stating, “People who struggle with addiction have their own reasons that nobody listens to, and I hope that I can be the person who can go up to them and listen to their stories, and help their stories get out into the world.”
Kim, Shwartz, and Vizitiv were all able to act upon their passions, and have learned countless lessons through their experiences. Kim, for one, advises other students who might want to make a change, “If you’re truly passionate about what you’re doing, it’s really important that you never give up whatever the circumstances are.”