4-minute read
Polk County has plenty of volunteer programs, educational opportunities, support services, local events, and other resources for teenagers – but for a high school student trying to figure out where to look, the information can be scattered.
That realization led the McKeel Academy of Technology sophomore Diora Franqui-Marchand to create Astraea, an online hub for teens to find local volunteer opportunities and other resources.
“I created Astraea after realizing that Polk County offers many helpful opportunities and resources for teenagers, but students often do not know they exist or where to find them,” Franqui-Marchand said.
“When you’re a student, there’s not a lot of websites or platforms where you’re able just to gather a bunch of resources,” she said.
Funneling teen ambition
She started imagining what a solution could look like, drawing on her own experiences as a student and what she described as a broader sentiment among students at her school.
Franqui-Marchand said that McKeel Academy is heavily focused on leadership, community involvement, and career preparation.
“I feel like a lot of people were very ambitious in my school and wanted to find places to funnel that ambition,” she said.
Franqui-Marchand organized Astraea around four main areas: opportunities, community & events, health & support, and know your rights. Franqui-Marchand researches resources, opportunities, and events daily, then manually adds what she finds to Astraea.
“If we compile all of that together, it’ll be easier for teens to access and be more involved in our community,” Franqui-Marchand said.
A business approach to a personal mission
She approached Astraea with what she describes as a business-minded way of thinking: identify a problem, figure out what people need and build something that addresses it.
She is figuring out how information should be organized, what resources students are most interested in and how to make the platform something teenagers will actually use.
She’s also encouraged by the positive response from the organizations covered on Astraea. Franqui-Marchand said many local organizations have been more than willing to answer her questions, participate in interviews, and share resources, which she appreciates.
“I really, really would love for us to build a really solid community where eventually it’ll be able to go beyond just here, like just in our little region,” Franqui-Marchand said.
But the project is also personal. The name Astraea, the goddess of justice, comes from Greek mythology, another passion of Franqui-Marchand’s.
“I personally have an affinity for mythology and wanted to blend my passion project with another passion of mine,” she said.
A digital platform for real-world community building
The website is still in the early days. Franqui-Marchand said its current focus is students, academics and college preparation, but she sees room for it to grow.
One of her favorite projects so far was covering Project Prom, a student-led project by UthMpact that provides free formalwear. The content discussing the event reached about 9,000 views.
For Franqui-Marchand, the project isn’t only about helping teenagers find an internship or fulfill community service requirements. She also wants to encourage them to get involved with the community around them. Part of that comes from a concern she has about how teenagers spend their time.
“There’s not a lot of third spaces for teenagers to hang out in because of how digitized our world is now. So just being able to provide that for teens and for us to connect over third spaces is really cool,” Franqui-Marchand said.
Astraea’s long-term goal, she said, is to eventually move beyond an online resource. She hopes it can help bring teenagers together in person through events and other community activities.
“I really hope in the future we’re going to be able to be more involved, maybe do events, and really just start bringing people together,” she said.
A family project
Astraea is currently a two-person operation. Franqui-Marchand is building the project alongside her mother, who has a background in marketing. When Franqui-Marchand first brought the idea to her mother, she said the response was immediate encouragement.
“She saw I had such a passion for it,” Franqui-Marchand said. “So when I had this idea, she was like, ‘Go for it… she was always really supportive of me.”
The two work together as Franqui-Marchand develops the platform and considers how to reach the teenagers it is intended to serve.
“It’s been really fun. I love (my mom). She’s into marketing, so she’s great at all that,” Franqui-Marchand said. “I’m very creative, so it’s like it’s a fun thing for both of us to do, and like, bond over”
That includes social media. Franqui-Marchand said she knows teenagers are already spending time on social platforms, so she wants Astraea to reach students there rather than expecting them to stumble across another website on their own.
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