Open Book Adventures- Summer 2021

How might we improve literacy skills in first and second graders?

Open Book Adventures (OBA) is One Stone’s longest-running Project Good program. First and second graders around the Treasure Valley come to One Stone to partner one-on-one with high school students, “Adventure Guides”, for three days of building connections and diving into activities that encourage a love of learning. Young buddies gain a fun and caring near-peer mentor while high school students expand their skills in leadership, problem-solving, communication, and empathy.

For three days in June, 21 first and second grade students and 20 high school students came to One Stone headquarters to practice reading and writing, work on their handwriting and storytelling skills, and engage in activities promoting social-emotional growth. 

The theme for this year's camp was Let the Wild Rumpus Begin, which was based on the book Where the Wild Things Are. Throughout the week campers and guides did activities such as writing acrostic poems, creating synonym rolls, and adding words to the new word wall during reading time. At the end of the week, campers celebrated all the new words they had learned over the past two days by holding a wild rumpus party.

Fast Fact Sheet

Year(s): Summer 2021

Focus: literacy and writing skills

Recipients: 1st and 2nd graders

Community partner: 

Number of recipients: 22

Number of One Stone members involved in planning: 5

Number of weeks of planning: 5

How many hours it took to prepare for implementation: 20

How many hours it took to implement: 18

Empow(HER)- Summer 2021

How might we empower young women to use their voice to create a better world for themselves and others?

In the summer of 2021, the Empow[HER] team came together to create a summer summit called Empow[HER] On: Climbing Your Mountain. After a year and a half of dealing with the hardships COVID caused for the Boise community, this group of high school students wanted to create a space that allowed for seventh and eighth grade girls to build connections as well as develop skills to help with overcoming obstacles. This was a two day summit that included a movie night and sleepover at One Stone HQ. 

On the first day, the team took the participants up into the foothills for dinner, a hike and an activity centered around practicing vulnerability and sharing a story of when you had to overcome an obstacle. After dinner and sharing space and time, the group went on a hike representing their overcoming obstacles by working together to climb to the top of the mountain. The night concluded with a sleepover at One Stone Headquarters. 

To maintain COVID protocols each girl brought their own sleeping gear and was separated with six feet of distance. The next morning, guides and participants walked over to the Idaho History Museum to tour the Trailblazing Women section. Afterward, everyone came back to One Stone HQ to participate in some more activities. One of them was decorating a tiny pot to put a plant in, and at the bottom of the pot putting a piece of paper with a struggle you are having in the bottom of the pot. Then putting soil and a flower over the top to represent that even though life is sometimes hard, it also helps us grow into something beautiful. The young students also created cards about inspirational women in their lives. It could be someone they knew or someone famous who they looked up to.

Fast Facts Sheet

Year(s): Summer 2021

Focus: Female empowerment

Recipients: 7th and 8th grade girls

Community partner: Idaho History Museum

Number of recipients: 20

Number of One Stone members involved in planning:  5-7

Number of weeks of planning: 10

How many hours it took to prepare for implementation: 20

How many hours it took to implement: 15

Empow(HER)- Spring 2021

How might we empower young women to use their voice to create a better world for themselves and others?

For the Spring of 2021, the Empow[HER] team created the Empow[HER] self retreat for girls in grades 6-9. The theme was all about writing your own HERstory and practicing self love. 

After doing some get to know you activities at One Stone, students went to the park with their high school buddies to listen to guest speaker, Tai Simpson, about how we can connect ourselves with nature and the earth. Girls participated in activities such as creating story circles, a dance party, and decorating tote bags. After eating lunch provided by Zero Roots Waste Market, participants and guides came back to One Stone HQ to hear from guest speaker, Shannon Mcguire, a One Stone Board Member. After listening to Shannon’s HERstory, the participants were given the chance to write their own HERstory answering the prompt what is your HERstory and how do you plan to continue it.

Fast Facts

Year(s): Spring 2021

Focus: Creating your own HERstory

Recipients: 6th-9th grade girls

Community partner: Speakers were Tai Simpson and Shannon Mcguire

Number of recipients: 30-40

Number of One Stone members involved in planning: 10

Number of weeks of planning: 10

How many hours it took to prepare for implementation: 10

How many hours it took to implement: 6

Participants shared the following about their experiences:

“Being at One Stone and with One Stone people inspire and empower me.”

“I feel like I understand more about compassion, life, and empathy and that makes me feel like I know more about myself.”

“I have heard other's experiences and it has made me a lot more confident about myself.”

Better(MEN)t- Fall 2020

How might we make the topic of "how to be a man" relevant, easy to approach, and community driven?

Better[MEN]t was back again this year, with the same mission of exploring what it means to be a young man in this world today. The team planned to tackle big issues such as gender roles and stereotypes, modeling vulnerability, and encouraging self-reflection. Team members started with having conversations about what it means to be a man in today’s society as well as hosting empathy interviews with men in their community.

After going through their empathy work, they decided to focus their efforts on creating a project working with junior high boys to help with establishing identity and healthy communication patterns. The team created a three-day camp for junior high boys to complete their Project Good experience. The camp featured numerous community-building activities, including video games, nerf wars, and capture the flag. Additionally, camp guides encouraged vulnerability among the participants by asking them to reconsider male stereotypes and what it means to be a man.

Fast Facts

Year(s): Fall 2020 - Summer 2021

Focus: Equipping young men for emotionally mature futures

Recipients: Young junior high-aged boys from our community

Community partner: N/A

Number of recipients: 13

Number of One Stone members involved in planning: 7

Number of weeks of planning: 30

How many hours it took to prepare for implementation: 5

How many hours it took to implement: 12

Sad Muffins- Fall 2020

How might we use baked goods to educate the young people about mental health and encourage them to express their emotions?

Back by popular demand, Sad Muffins started its second year as a Project Good program with the objective of learning more about mental health. They hosted meetings weekly, alternating between baking new desserts together over zoom, and meeting with guest speakers to have conversations surrounding mental health. Guest speakers included Blythe Forman from Cakes by Blythe, Emmeli Mayo from Emmeli's Cakes, and Val from Depressed Cake Shop. 

The Sad Muffin team’s final implementation included joining forces with the team leading Love of Learning (LOL, a supplemental after school tutoring/reading program that paired high school students and elementary students). They led an “Emotions and Emojis” cookie decorating activity. The Sad Muffins started by having a conversation about emotions with LOL participants, then decorated cookies with icing to resemble an emoji of the participants choosing that represented how they felt that day. The participants then presented their cookie to the group and explained why they chose the emoji they did.

Sad Muffins also implemented at the end of May by delivering baked goodies with positive notes and a list of community resources to neighbors in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month.

Fast Facts

Year(s): Fall 2020 - Spring 2021

Focus: Mental and emotional health

Recipients: Love of Learning’s elementary-aged participants

Community partner: Project Good’s Love of Learning

Number of recipients: 20

Number of One Stone members involved in planning: 15

Number of weeks of planning: 20

How many hours it took to prepare for implementation: 2

How many hours it took to implement: 2

Operation Salsa- Fall 2020

How might we address food insecurity by providing fresh food to those in need in our community?

Operation Salsa started as a project with the intention of tackling local food insecurity issues by planting a new garden for our community, participating in small-scale agriculture, and making meals from their harvest for those in need. The team started meetings by participating in four different empathy experiences: visiting and working at New Roots Garden,  Ohana Farm visit, Seeds of Change farm visit, and Fiddler’s Green Farm visit. 

In the beginning, Operation Salsa placed their focus on restoring soil health to the New Roots garden plot on Cole Rd. This included cutting down weeds, removing a weed barrier, sourcing horse manure (for free delivered via trailer weekly), building a compost container out of reused pallets, and spreading fall cover crop seed on the garden. The team also coordinated gleaning excess apples from a One Stone family to share with the Rolling Tomato, an organization fighting food waste by getting extra produce to shelters and people in need. Apples went to the staff and Club members at the Boys and Girls Club and the Womens and Children’s Alliance. 

In the spring, Operation Salsa’s main focus was planning for spring planting. This included training and learning about issues farmworkers face. They had a panel interview and discussion with Christina Stucker-Gassi and Samantha Guerreo, two advocates for farmworkers and migrant laborers in Idaho. They also had a seed prepping and a seed education workshop run by Ben Trieu, who is a volunteer coach for this team, in order to start preparing seeds for the garden. By the end of the school year, Operation Salsa had built garden rows and planted starter plants in the area.

Fast Facts

Year(s): Fall 2020 - Summer 2021

Focus: Food accessibility and sustainable gardening practices 

Community partner: Treasure Valley Community Garden Cooperative; St Stephens Episcopal Church; Boise Urban Garden School; Boise Kitchen Collective 

Number of recipients: 50

Number of One Stone members involved in planning: 20

Number of weeks of planning: 30

How many hours it took to prepare for implementation: ongoing project

How many hours it took to implement: ongoing project

FLIP- Fall 2020

How might we help children of CATCH families in making their house THEIR home?

FLIP started its fourth year as a One Stone project, but pivoted to a new way of tackling the same HMW statement: “How might we help children of CATCH families in making their house THEIR home?” While the team continued their empathy work by getting to know each family personally, they decided to focus on building or renovating dressers (identified by community partners as a main need) in order to personalize each room.

The team began by having a dresser drive to collect dressers that were ready to renovate. After receiving two dressers in good shape that were ready to be personalized to recipients’ needs. Coach Adan Callsen and student Bebe Blue began preparing to turn initial ideas from the team into CNC ready fabrication plans. Students also interviewed two recipient families to see how many dressers each household would be needing and to learn more about the recipients’ needs and personalities. The West family would need two dressers (three young children with a baby on the way), and the Judge family would need two dressers (two young girls). 

The final product included completing four dressers for two different families, and supplying bedding to one of the families who desperately needed it.

Fast Facts

Year(s): Fall 2020/Spring 2021

Focus: Families experiencing homelessness

Recipients: Two CATCH families

Community partner: CATCH

Number of recipients: ~10

Number of One Stone members involved in planning: 8-10

Number of weeks of planning: 15-20

Everyone's an Athlete- Fall 2020

How might we encourage sportsmanship and lifelong movement for 5-12 year olds with physical and intellectual disabilities?

In the Fall of 2020, the Everyone’s an Athlete team created a 3 week yoga experience in partnership with Game Changers Idaho for their Kinder-2nd grade athletes. Each session included both learning different yoga techniques, as well as doing fun games to help the kids work on mobility and balance.

The high school students worked with different yoga therapists in Boise to learn more about how to teach yoga to kids with mental and physical disabilities. After learning more about this, they created their own yoga flows to do with the kids that could be done by multiple different age groups. They also wanted to make sure the kids had time to connect with each other in high energy activities so the team planned times for the kids to play capture the flag together.

Fast Facts

Year(s): Fall 2020 - Summer 2021

Focus: Youth with physical and intellectual disabilities

Recipients: K-2nd 

Community partner: Game Changers

Number of recipients: 15-20

Number of One Stone members involved in planning: 13

Number of weeks of planning: 10

How many hours it took to prepare for implementation: 10

How many hours it took to implement: 10