CAPSTONE PROJECT: TEDxYouth@RVA

On November 14, 2015, the second annual TEDxYouth@RVA event was held at the Oates Theater at the Collegiate School. TEDx is an independently organized TED event that is put on by local people who are dedicated to the TED motto, “ideas worth spreading”. The event was planned collaboratively between students from the Collegiate School, and Glen Allen High School, and James River seniors, Maja Gabrielson and Anna Davis. The event had 3 traditional sessions with a total of 17 thought-provoking speakers covering a variety of topics such as choosing happiness, embracing uncertainty, and sexual assault prevention. In addition, there was an interactive session including food catered by Chipotle, and 7 interactive speakers. The speakers in the interactive session included Tomahawk Middle School discussing their project with creating prosthetic hands, Aidan Brown, from Moody Middle School, engaging people in his research with dogs and their effect on human stress relief, and Hillary Zell creating screenprints with the TEDxYouth@RVA 2015 logo on them. Overall, the event was an overwhelming success with 300 plus attendees, and bright smiles at the end of the night from the speakers they had heard from and met throughout the night.