Albany Senior High School/Impact Projects/Proposal

Advice before you start
A great starting point is to choose a topic based on your interests, then think about the possibilities of how this might link to benefiting your community. This will make sure that the way you apply your learning will be relevant and make a difference in the world. You will be able to choose to work by yourself or in a team for your project. An impact project committee will help to link you with other people who have shared interests, and will register your groups, assigning a supervising teacher, when they are finalised.

To begin to develop a focus for your topic you could ask an open-ended question about what you are hoping to do. You will then need to start to investigate the potential of your idea to see if it is achievable, and to ensure that the contribution you intend to make will be meaningful! To do this you could talk to a community advisor or other expert to get feedback about your idea. You might also identify some potential stakeholders and work out ways to gather and understand their points of view e.g. survey, focus groups, video conferencing. You may also decide to do some reading around your idea, and look up recent articles on the internet or in the library so you can start to become more of an expert. During this time you will be offered support and guidance from your tutor as well as your supervising teacher.

For example: Your passion is dance. You and a group of friends want to create a dance performance. The community coordinator for Albany is organizing a Matariki celebration and is looking for local acts that might be able to contribute to this event.

(A proposal is the putting forward of an idea for approval and feedback to a panel.)

Once you have registered your group or individual topic you will begin to clarify the focus of your project, clearly identifying the need or problem. Through consultation with your key stakeholders, supervising teacher and/or community advisor you will identify the key outcomes you are hoping to achieve. You will also agree on what your success criteria might look like, (how you will know whether your project has been successful). You will begin to work out possible solutions, and propose the strategy that you consider is the best option, ensuring your project is manageable and successful. There is a proposal template that will help guide you through this stage, to make sure you have thought about all the things you need to.


 * Proposal Template

You will be given a time to present your proposal to a panel of teachers and peers. They will ask questions to help you critique your ideas so far and based on this feedback you may wish to modify or refine what you intend to do. If a proposal covers all the aspects of the template and is achievable it will be approved.