Several Iowa High School students were named Louisiana state winners in the ‘Samsung Solve For Tomorrow’ contest. It encourages students to solve real-world issues in their community using classroom skills involving science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM.
“It was around the holidays when we were doing our brainstorming, so they saw homelessness was an emerging issue and kind of gaining traction in the news, so they wanted to work on a solution for that,” said their teacher, Jennifer Underwood.
The students’ proposed solution?
“It’s like a center for homeless people and it will be portable and collapsible so that it’s easy to move around so that more people have access to it,” explains student Lacey Trahan.
That proposal was chosen as the winner out of all participating high schools in the state. Now, Iowa High School students are coming up with the logistics and prototypes for their project in hopes to advance to the national finalist competition.
If named national winners, their final shelter prototype would come to life and be a solution to their community’s lack of low-cost portable shelters, but even if they don’t come out on top, the students hope to still make a difference.
“I hope that even if we don’t win, a company will pick it up and use our idea,” said Asya Rhodes. Grant Sanders adds, “I hope to see that we can help change somebody’s life.”