Woods Hole Diversity Action Committee Will Hold Month-Long Student Contest For Black History Month
In observance of Black History Month, the Woods Hole Diversity Action Committee is holding a contest asking students to consider innovative ways to help alleviate healthcare disparities in the African American community and showcase their ideas using any modality of creation they see fit.
The contest will run for the entire month of February and is open to any student in grades 7 through 12. The prompt asks students to propose a solution to eliminating an existing healthcare disparity affecting African Americans and demonstrate how their idea will promote health and wellness equity for African Americans through the media of their choice.
“This year, in the spirit of inclusivity, we wanted to invite students to share a form of their own modality, what avenue really spoke to them,” said Carol DiFalco, school counselor and diversity, equity, and inclusion coordinator at Falmouth Academy. “We wanted to create an assignment or an invitation that would allow students to dig deep into their imaginations, observe their surroundings, and to see, with the use of their creativity, what ideas came up.”
Ms. DiFalco said she is one small part of a larger committee that oversees all of the Woods Hole Diversity Action Committee’s Black History Month activities.
While the overall theme is nationwide, the Black History Month Committee determined the prompt for the contest. Ms. DiFalco said the committee worked to come up with a contest invitation for students that provided them with an actionable way of addressing disparities within their local community.
“From my perspective, it allows students to personalize the story for themselves and to see potentially their own participation or questioning about a larger system of health care and how it intersects with socioeconomic status, race, culture, gender, geography,” Ms. DiFalco said. “We live in a region of the world that affords us access to top-notch medical care. That’s the narrative that we say out loud, but is that universally true for everyone who lives in this region? That’s a really important question to consider.”
Submissions for the contest could be anything, ranging from a traditional essay, a piece of creative writing, video, photography, poetry, audio or data analysis.
“Hopefully, the invitation for students to share maybe a piece of art or a video or any other modality of choice or an essay would reach a broader range of students and allow for some really interesting ideas to emerge,” Ms. DiFalco said. “That’s really the intention in expanding on the traditional essay format: broader reach of kids, [to] spur interest, creativity, imagination, and thought.”
Ms. DiFalco said she thought that this specific assignment would resonate with students because it is similar to one of the units that 10th grade biology students study at Falmouth Academy.
“For the past couple of years in our 10th grade biology classes I’ve done an exercise with students around healthcare disparities,” she said. “It was not unique to the African American community; it was done in a broader context throughout the state of Massachusetts, but I was really impressed by the depth with which students engaged in that unit. It felt like this is something that kids really do connect with; they connect with the idea of healthcare. That’s something that is part of their everyday experience and it’s valuable for students to explore the ways in which that experience is not equal.”
Every student who submits work to the project will receive a certificate of participation, and two $500 prizes will be awarded to the most thought-provoking entries that “provide a compelling explanation to achieve health equity within the African American community.”
To learn more about the student contest or submit work, visit the Black History Month page on Woods Hole Diversity Advisory Committee’s website; it can be found under the Initiatives tab.