By Khalida Sarwari
Armed with cameras, a group of fifth-graders from Argonaut Elementary School recently went on a mission … to the dentist. And they didn’t stop at just a few dental offices in Saratoga. They went to see dentists in Campbell, Cupertino and Sunnyvale as well. In the span of two months, the kids kept going back to the dentist, but it wasn’t for their benefit. They were helping people who couldn’t afford dental care.
The students had the idea for the project about eight months ago when they got involved with Destination Imagination, said Caroline Prasad, the team manager who oversaw the group of seven fifth-graders. Known as DI, the creative problem-solving nonprofit organization not only had the kids brainstorm an idea for a project but encouraged them to see it all the way through to the end, remaining involved in every step along the way.
“The kids decided they wanted to do a community service project,” Prasad said. “They decided they wanted to help people while doing this DI. They wanted to provide free dental cleaning for people who could not afford it or people who don’t have insurance.”
The first step was finding a name for this initiative. Eventually they settled on “Mission Dental Intervention.” They had to also come up with a name for their team. When they put together the first letters of their first names, they came close to “take a guess,” with a few missing letters. So they went with TAKe A GUesS, which stands for Tarun Krishnan, Ananya Krishnan, Katie Lam, Armina Mayya, Gino Prasad, Ujjwal Krishnamurthi and Shyam Nuggehalli.
Next, they were faced with the arduous task of finding people in the community who could not afford dental insurance, as well as dentists who would be willing to provide free cleanings. Neither task was simple. For one, not every dentist was willing to take on the duty that was requested of them. And finding patients was just as difficult.
The first place the kids looked was at local homeless shelters, but had difficulty reaching people there. Through word of mouth they were able to find six folks in the community, including people who worked as cooks and housekeepers and those working part-time in small businesses. One was a single mother, and another was a woman who was retired but lives on a fixed income and cannot afford coverage.
They also found dentists who were willing to help. In Saratoga, they found Dr. Arathi Tiruvur at Seven Hills Dental, Dr. Kathleen Ban at Park Saratoga Dental and Dr. Daniel Zadeh. In Campbell, they found a participant in Dr. Jimiann Wong. And in Sunnyvale they found Dr. Steven Bo and Dr. Sunita Bajaj. They also enlisted the help of Dr. Mahnaz Gorgani at Cupertino Dental Group.
Most of the reactions the team received were positive, said 11-year-old Ananya Krishnan.
“We told them that we were a local DI team and we explained what our project was. After people heard what we were doing, they thought, ‘Wow this is a cool thing,’ and wanted to help us,” Ananya said. “We really got a nice positive outcome from it.”
The patients they found were equally enthusiastic, expressing surprise and then appreciation, said Ananya.
The kids then spent weeks researching dental cleaning, scheduling appointments, and then–with the help of some adults–taking the patients to their appointments. They videotaped the cleaning procedures and interviewed the patients and dentists.
Using iMovie, the kids pored over hours worth of footage to capture the most important moments of their project to enter into a regional competition hosted by Destination Imagination.
Once they had their movie in place, and a skit and rap of their journey memorized, the kids entered the Silicon Valley Destination Imagination competition in March, winning first place and going on to compete at the California State Destination Imagination finals in San Diego on March 23. They placed second and now advance to the Global Destination Imagination competition in Knoxville, Tenn., starting May 22. The Argonaut team will be one of more than 1,000 teams from 13 different countries competing in the five-day tournament at the University of Tennessee.
“It’s like the Olympics,” Prasad said.
From now until then, the team will be raising money for the trip, which Prasad said will cost about $1,400 per student. The team is considering offering classes and holding a garage sale to raise the funds.
“Our target is to come up with $14,000 to $15,000,” she said.
Regardless of what happens at the final tournament, the kids know their job isn’t done. Prasad said they intend to continue with the project, expanding its scope to include other students at Argonaut and eventually students from other schools.
“It really helps you bond with people,” Ananya said. “We learned about teamwork and how to communicate with people we’d never met. It was an important experience that I’m glad we got to try, and I hope we can do it again.”
Anyone who would like to support the team can email Prasad at caroline.prasad@iac.com. For more information about the team, visitsites.google.com/site/teamtakeaguess.
