Capstone Presentation

This past Monday, I was able to present the capstone project I have been working on this whole year with my partner Daniel Zheng.

Daniel and I present our project

This project started when we were assigned a "Capstone Project" in our GIP class, and I asked Daniel to work with me. We spent some time brainstorming projects, and although we knew we wanted to work with art and artists, we had no clue where to start. That's when I contacted Cassandra Puga, the mother of a close friend of mine and founder of La Lona, a nonprofit organization in Uganda.

Cassandra put us in touch with Daniel Demento, the co-founder of Worldwide Musicians United, a nonprofit that works closely with performing arts throughout Africa. From there, we met people such as Luwaganda Adam, owner and founder of Mama Music School, an organization providing underprivileged children in Uganda access to performing arts.

A student at La Lona shows off his artwork

When we first met all these people, Daniel and I were honestly a bit overwhelmed. We had no clue where to start working. So we set up a ZOOM meeting with them so we could brainstorm ideas. The original plan was to create a "PenPal" connection through us and children in Uganda, but these plans fell through when we ran into problems with shipping. So Daniel and I had the idea to create videos for the Ugandan children of us doing artwork and music. If we could not share our physical work, at least we could do it digitally.

In Daniel's garage, we got to work, filming myself drawing and Daniel playing instruments. And although it was hard work, we were always able to stay motivated because every time we sent a video out, we would hear back from Cassandra about how much the children loved it.

Art created by students at La Lona

What we were originally trying to do with this project was to create bonds across the globe through art. And although we were not able to achieve what we originally had in mind, Daniel and I can confidently say that by now, we are not just working partners with Cassandra, Mr. Demento, and Adam, but friends as well.

Special thank you to Cassandra Puga, Luwaganda Adam, Daniel Dememento, and Mr. Will for helping us with this project!