Rachel's MYP project inspired by city's homeless

Rachel Thomson, Year 10 student at Wesley College, Glen Waverley, explains the inspiration behind her MYP Personal Project...

In the city recently, I saw a homeless woman in the cold and felt like there wasn’t really a way I could help. 

As part of our IB Middle Years Programme at Wesley College, we get to choose a topic we’re passionate about and design a product around it for our Personal Project. I decided to base my project on homelessness, and realised there are many ways that we can help others.

In our day-to-day lives, we have the resources to protect ourselves from the environment, but homeless people don’t. Hypothermia is a real issue so I designed a prototype blanket to keep a homeless person warm. 

My blanket is made of weather-proof canvas, flannelette insulation and fleece, which is warm and actually wicks away sweat.

I wanted to donate it to a charity called 300 Blankets because they don’t just hand out items and walk away, they build a relationship to really help homeless people. I knew it would be going straight to someone to use. I will be donating it during the school holidays and then I’m going to make more blankets!

I’m really happy I could make something that could help someone’s life.