Team:Jiangsu High School/Public Engagement
Education & Public Engagement
Education & Public Engagement
Fundraising
We designed some accessories for people who want to support our team. We contacted some local companies who were agreeable to help us design and manufacture those products. Through a hard time of decision making, we chose 6 products to stay on our final list of accessories. Those things were: t-shirt, sticker, wristband, handbag, pin and phone ring.
Here are the design drawings for the accessories:
On July 27, we hold a fundraising event to raise money for our team. For preparation, we contacted the New Oriental Education & Technology Group in Nanjing and they were willing to provide us a meeting room that could accommodate more than 100 people. We opened this activity by giving out a brief introduction about who we are, what iGEM is and what our topic is about. We invited Dr. Lu and Dr. Lv to give out informative speeches about Alzheimer's and why it is important to raise attention on this disease. Then we sold movie tickets to the public and showed a film about Alzeimer's Disease. At the end of this activity, we sold our accessories to people who were interested in supporting our team.
By holding this activity, we collected more than 200 dollars. Besides, more than 40 people who attended this activity learned about Alzheimer's disease, our team and iGEM competition. Even this activity is over, we are still working on spreading the information about AD and we hope more and more people will realize the harmfulness of this disease and how badly it can influence a person and his or her family.
In order to augment the public awareness of Alzheimer's disease, we organized a couple of community activities to engage people in caring for patients suffering the disease and help them learn more about Alzheimer's. For Dry Lab's Lab Notebook, click here.
Street campaign
On July 25, a subgroup of our Anti-AD team went to Xinjiekou, Confucius temple and Laomen East of Nanjing for field interviews in order to distribute questionnaires to study people's understanding of Alzheimer's disease and sell tickets for the film screening on July 27.
After half an hour's car ride, we came to Nanjing Xinjiekou, first of all, we set up the roll up, began to conduct citizens questionnaires. Near the beginning, we still have some nervous, and in a roll up next to the police they received at the same time. We put the roll up, directly in an interview in the streets, the first is to Xinjiekou near the mall around. There were a lot of people, we picked several kind person oriented, as they handed out questionnaires, and made some interviews, though sometimes rejection, but most people were still very patient to accept our interview. Some people even took the initiative to follow our WeChat ID, thanks to which our confidence increased a lot. After some time, we went to the Confucius temple and the Laomen East. We gradually became confident to hand out questionnaires and to talk with our interviewees. Finally we collected a lot of video and photo material, also for the future research.
We have not only gathered the public's knowledge about Alzheimer's disease, but also exercised our ability to communicate with strangers.
Activity in elders' care center
On July 24, we visited the Good Time Nursing Home in Nanjing. This nursing home is not as bright, large, fancy as we thought. However, it basically satisfy the old's needs. After we arrived and contacted the management team of the nursing home, the old gradually came to the meeting room to attend our speech, who were around 75 years old on average.
During the speech, we found out that the old hardly understood our speech about Alzheimer. Maybe that is because most of the old were illiterates. We tried to simplify our explanation about this disease by introducing some gestures and easy-to-understand pictures to enhance their comprehension of our presentation. What was more, we noticed that several old papas behaved very strange shaking their heads in a particular way. Later on, we knew that these papas had Alzheimer. Additionally, these papas were very easy to be anger just as what we said as symptoms in this nursing home. Although it was very hard to communicate with or to satisfy most residents here due to their oldness or Alzheimer, the leader of this nursing home tried her best to provide them with a happy place to enjoy the rest of their life.
In addition, whatever how forgetful these old people were, like asking the same question again and again and not listening to volunteers, the volunteers were always patient and careful.
We are glad there is such a place for the old and we are considering about how to make unique contribution to it through our own efforts, such as offering some voluntary service in spreading prevention methods of Alzheimer or regular daily care.
Wechat official account
Although Alzheimer is a common disease, the general population has little to no knowledge on it. Thus, an official Wechat account was created with two purposes: to inform and show. With this in mind, we utilized the advantages of technology as an opportunity to spread the basic concepts of Alzheimer disease. Each day, an article was posted to keep the public updated on our research progress. Articles such as "Suggested Reading" and surveys are published to better provide a basic level of knowledge.
