Sarah Jung

Highlighting important information, SIA President Karen Chen ’26 and Secretary Nikita Maralla ’26 explains the upcoming events and projects for the year. The SIA club will be visiting Grisham Middle School bi-weekly to hold meetings with middle school students.

Eager to meet passionate middle schoolers, the Social Impact Activists (SIA) Club officer team visited Grisham Middle School for their bi-weekly social impact meeting on Thursday, Sept. 19. The meetings are hosted by the officers to guide middle school students in creating their personal social impact project, helping them get prepared for high school. Focusing on various social issues, the SIA club aims to promote sustainability and social equality to make a difference. 

With the support from Grisham’s IB coordinator Ms. Rose Cornejo, officers were able to gather students who were interested in the club, along with some students who were previously exposed to the Westwood community through prior experiences interacting with Speech and Debate Club. 

“We tried to reach out to as many students as possible because obviously, we want more people to be involved with us,” SIA President Karen Chen ‘26 said.

The meeting started off with a greeting and introduction of each of the officers, while Chen handed out donuts to the participating students. To kickoff the meeting and introduce the mission of the club, the officers played a brief TED talk video by Marian Spier that introduced the principles of social impact, and how students can apply them in real life. 

After some discussion regarding the video, SIA Vice President Anika Aslesh ‘26 and Secretary Nikita Maralla ’26 explained a rundown of the club’s ultimate goal of accomplishing small projects that middle school students can conduct based on their passion. 

“When I was in middle school, I guess I had passion but I didn’t really know how to use that, or like what to do with it,” Aslesh said. “I feel like we [can] at least expose them to things you can do or certain ideas. I think [it] would be really helpful because it’s something that you can continue in the future, and it’s obviously good for like writing things down like a resume, for example. It’s also just like really helpful because it shows you that you can make an impact on your community and it’s doable.”

To receive input and get inspiration for future projects, officers observed students writing their area of interest and how they want to pursue social entrepreneurship. The officers provided potential social issue scenarios students could discuss, and later used them to brainstorm various project ideas that could help resolve each of the respective scenarios.

“I hope that we will be able to help and guide younger students,” Chen said. “I think passion is very important because I feel like passion is the root of changing things, and I want to show them and help them see what’s happening around the world and things that they can do to help [their] community. ”

SIA club will continue their second meeting at Grisham on Thursday, Oct. 10 at 7:30 a.m.