Introduction

Our documentary project was about finding a topic that we were passionate about, researching it and using the skills we learned at Freestyle to express our research and our passion creatively. During this process, we learned how to use the storytelling skills we picked up in English and Film to make it entertaining.

The research paper that I made for English was about an organization called Ziva Mitnick Foundation. ZMF helps children with cancer by decorating their hospital rooms and doing fun crafts with them. It was founded by my friend Noah Mitnick, who lost his sister Ziva to leukemia. Since I know Noah and the Mitnick family very well, I already knew a lot about the founding of ZMF, but I was curious to learn more. He was 15 when he created this non-profit, how did he do it?

English

In English, we took our research topics and turned them into five page articles. But to do this, we had to do more research. We had to find sources relating to our article and conduct interviews with people who have in-depth knowledge on this subject. The amount of research we had to do seemed daunting at first, but I got the hang of it. I learned about the psychological effects of hospitalization on kids and how ZMF’s decorations could help mitigate that. I also interviewed Noah about his experience starting a non-profit and balancing that with high school. Then I interviewed Michelle Hug, the childlike specialist at Santa Clara Kaiser. She treated Ziva and is on the Board of Directors for ZMF. She told me about how Ziva’s attitude in the face of such a terrible thing was inspiring and she admires Noah’s drive to do good in the world.

Digital Media