Nate Samuelson explains how leveraging curiosity can lead to big impact using Need Journals
A global citizen recognizes the issues and events happening around them and their interest is piqued. When they notice injustice or inequality, they ask themselves questions about how they might effect change. Oftentimes, they explore those questions with others; sometimes they continue to reflect on those moments alone; but every time, an aspiring global citizen should consider using a Need Journal.
Need Journal
Noun
- A journal in which a person records the needs that they notice in the world around them.
Usage
- Need Journals are voice notes, stickies, a google document, or any other digital or physical space that a person maintains.
- Need Journals are populated with recognitions of need as they happen, ongoing reflection, or any spontaneous thought the recorder has about how to effect change.
The Need Journal is an integral first step for teachers and students to move from empathy (recognition of need) to ideation (seeds for projects) to action (making an impact).
Curriculum Connection
The active use of a need journal has helped students to verbalize and organize their thoughts...about the needs in the world around them
In the Design Your Impact (DYI) elective at Korea International School, the active use of a need journal has helped students to verbalize and organize their thoughts, passions, and observations about the needs in the world around them.
Empathy is developed through this process, and students have more agency and ownership over the issues that they investigate. The Need Journal seeds the research phase of the service learning cycle during which students dive deeper into the issues and decide which need they would like to try to impact through direct or indirect service, research, and/or advocacy.
Here are some examples of this process.
Need Journals in Service Learning
Project 1: A Lesson in Tech
Need → To close the technology gap for seniors (65+) in Korea
Seed → To build technology education for seniors (65+) in Korea
Action → Design and implement technology courses through local senior centers
A service learning project that came out of DYI started with a need that a student wrote down after having a conversation with her grandma about how to use her phone.
Grandma wanted to connect with her granddaughter more regularly, but she could hardly turn on her phone let alone leverage the technological capacity of an app to connect with her granddaughter more effectively.
The student noted a technology gap for seniors in Korea in her Need Journal, and after some thought and research, she realized she wanted to build technology courses for seniors.
The planning and preparation phase had her working alongside local senior centers to design 4-week technology courses for senior citizens in Korea which she will implement and refine over the summer of 2022.
Project 2: Recycling Everything That Comes With Delivery
Need → To do something with all those ice packs from food delivery
Seed → Provide information and options for the community to properly recycle ice packs
Action → Build a bilingual website with information about different types of ice packs, as well as where and how to properly recycle them
Impact often starts with something as small as curiosity
Two students noticed that, due to an increase in home delivery during the pandemic, their freezers were full of ice packs.
They recognized that something needed to be done with all of those ice packs. After researching, they found that there were at least five or six different types of ice packs, and that not all of them could be disposed of or recycled in the same way.
They made an informative video about the challenge of ice packs, designed a website with information about the different types, and even added a map that used location tracking to show the user their closest option for recycling ice packs.
Their next step has been reaching out to companies to encourage them to use the most eco-friendly and easiest to recycle ice packs.
Watching Seeds Grow
It is often forgotten that a huge impact often starts with something as small as curiosity.
Keeping a Need Journal doesn’t take much time, and, as is evidenced by the projects above, the return on investment can be very high.
There are needs constantly present in the world, but if the recognition of them is never recorded, they become fleeting moments. Need Journals provide the opportunity to capture those fleeting moments to plant seeds that may grow into incredible impact.