Watkinson's 'Shantytown Project' raises awareness

 Evan Kroll and Cole Fishman, of West Hartford.

Students from Watkinson School, in Hartford, embarked on an attempt to recreate and experience the global humanitarian issues of hunger and homelessness. 

The 13 students, supervised by two staff members, built their own houses out of cardboard and lived in them, with little food and no amenities, for two nights. They had the benefit of two speakers,  Trinity College Professor of Geography, Garth Myers, who spoke on "Informal Settlement in African Cities," and UCONN Sociology Professor Jeremy Pais who spoke on "Race and Economic Inequality in Modern America".
The Shantytown Project was created by students at Watkinson School. Its a Senior Project of Tafari Duncan '13 from Hartford. Senior Projects are community orientated research tasks chosen in their senior year.  Students have the ability to choose from a wide range of subjects and project designs, but the intent is that their project connects to an issue that is close to them, and gives back to the community.  Past projects have included fundraising to support orphanages, surveys, and research papers.

Watkinson's mission is to give the students the power to shape their lives and the world around them.  This Shantytown Project was designed with the intent to teach students about the world around them, one they may not understand or see everyday, and enable them to fix it.  By providing an experience, the goal of Shantytown is to build the passon needed to produce ideas that can shape the necessary change.

Watkinson student participants were:  Tafari Duncan of Hartford '13 (organizer), Evan Kroll '13 of West Hartford,  Cole Fishman '14 of West Hartford,  Liam O'Brien '14 of Simsbury, Julie Feinberg '13 of Granby,  Grace Nelson '14 of Manchester, Matthew Stevens '13 of Hartford,  Brandon Smiley '13 of Burlington, Gabie Gagnon '13 of Rocky Hill, Elizabeth Boxer '14 of Glastonbury, and Connor Linskey '14 of Portland, Tianna Edwards '14 of Hartford and Mason Bracker '13 of Hartford.