Bakersfield Matters
High School seniors find joy in COVID-era projects By Lisa Kimble
» SINCE 2003, HIGH-ACHIEVING HIGH SCHOOL
SENIORS SELECTED TO PARTICIPATE IN THE JIM BURKE EDUCATION FOUNDATION’S DREAM BUILDERS PROGRAM, AND ITS YEAR-LONG SISTER LEADERSHIP GROUP FORD DIMENSION, HAVE BEEN CHURNING OUT CREATIVE AND IMPACTFUL SERVICE PROJECTS. The Dream Builders’ motto is “helping Kern County youth excel.” There has been a teen voter registration drive, an anti-vaping campaign, and homelessness efforts. Year after year, the rule remained the same about selecting a topic — don’t repeat a recent project. But for the first time in the program’s history, the rules went out the window as this year’s class convened amid the pandemic. Meetings with the four groups’ mentors were zoomed, and they were
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assigned a theme. “We have never done this before, but we thought that there had been so much negativity in their lives with the pandemic that the project they would work on for the next five months should not only be something that brings others joy, but something that would give them joy to work on,” said Katie Werdel, director of student leadership with Jim Burke Ford, on the decision to task them with creating something related to joy. Despite COVID restrictions, four teams of eight presented projects they deemed joyful. The winning project, “Nutritious Delicious” from Team Bank of the Sierra, created a virtual cookbook featuring recipes from local culinary experts. The students partnered with the Edible Schoolyard to produce instructional videos that used PHOTOS COURTESY OF LISA KIMBLE
