At PCDS, students have found ways to help the community through businesses and passion projects.
Junior Emilio Saenz created a website called NaveganteAZ. According to Saenz, “it is the only existing directory of bilingual schools in the state.” Saenz explained that he built the website because one of his friends who had moved from Mexico City did not speak any English and struggled to find access to a bilingual program in Arizona. Emilio built an AI model that was able to “scrape all school district websites,” in order to find out which schools had bilingual programs. Saenz’s website is now used across the state of Arizona by many people who are looking for bilingual programs.
Senior Carson Rose is a co-owner and co-founder of ATLYS, a water bottle company. The product is a combination of a squirt bottle and a standard tumbler bottle. Rose spoke about the challenges he’s faced throughout the process of creating and selling the bottle. Rose said one of the problems was the conversion rates of website viewers in comparison to purchases. He explained that for most companies, the average conversion rate from website visits to purchases was “around 2%”, and from the cart to purchases, it was “15-20%”. He said that their numbers were “significantly below that”. However, he later went on to say that they had “sold out of their first run”, even with the challenges regarding the conversion rates. The bottles are predicted to ship to customers in December, and for now they are still working on promotion of the bottle while they wait.
Senior Alaina Kieran is the owner and founder of the website ProjectCommunity. The website allows for students to easily access volunteer opportunities around Arizona. She stated, “I noticed incoming freshmen didn’t know where to complete their required ten hours of community service.” She explained that originally she was interested in designing an app, but said, “I was coding the whole app from scratch, but I realized my coding skills weren’t sufficient enough to create the portal I needed.” This led her to designing a website instead, which she found much more success in. Alaina explained that her website has an “add personal experience button” that allows for other students to share where and what they did for service hours.
Creating a business or website is not easy. However, these PCDS students have chosen to persevere through challenges, and their reward has been success not only for themselves but also for their community.
