As long as “Research” doesn’t become the holy grail in and of itself.
A kid in my community just took on a project to create an online shopping cart for the local foodbank. He had volunteered there for years (first with a parent, then with his synagogue) and saw that as grateful as people were for their groceries, the folks who were gluten free/low sodium/diabetic frequently got products they really couldn’t use and were trading them on the sidewalk with other families.
This is a hard, continued commitment on his part because unlike at a regular grocery store where the inventory is pretty consistent week to week, the foodbank relies on donations so some weeks there are turnips and other weeks there are potatoes and the types of proteins vary tremendously.
His contribution is just phenomenal. The organization could have paid someone 20-30K to figure out the problem, do the programming, and then pay a part-time person to run the app and feed it back to an inventory management system. They would never have done that- money goes to buying eggs and meat or whatever else didn’t get donated that week.
Is this as sexy as the “genetics research” his classmates are doing-- some of whom have parents who work at pharma companies or in genetics labs and who provide both “technical support” AND helped get them the job? No. Not sexy. But it was based on years of quiet volunteering, seeing a problem, and coming up with a fix which preserves the dignity of the recipients (he’d cringe to watch people swapping out loaves of bread on a public street) AND is nutritionally/medically appropriate.
There are lots of “impressive” things a HS kid can do- one of which is “research” of course. But so many unmet needs and so many kids with skills.
