Lost and Found Website

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School

Screenshot of the lost and found website

Introduction

As an MYP student at an IB school, one of the things I have to do every year is launch a Service as Action (SA) project. SA projects can be done individually or in groups, usually two to three, and the main goal is to ā€œserve a communityā€.

Last year, for my first SA projectā€”although SA projects are done from the beginning of MYP1 (grade 6), I joined this school in MYP3 (grade 8)ā€”I created an ā€œEveryday Reading Challengeā€. It was a nice project, but I thought I could have done something better. For the next one, I wanted to do something more ambitious and show my passion for computer science to others in our school. Thatā€™s why, last September, I came up with the idea of creating a ā€œLost and Found Websiteā€ for my MYP4 SA project. I would then bring this idea to life during the following 6 months.

At the time Iā€™m writing this blog post (September 2026), the school year for MYP5 just began, which also means that the project has been completed. Looking back, this project turned out to be one of the best school projects that Iā€™ve done in my school life (which is one of the reasons Iā€™m making a blog post about it). I was not only able to succeed in the technical side (development of the website, deployment, QR codes, etc.) but also the organizational side of it (raising awareness, policies, posters, surveys). In the end, I also received an award that I didnā€™t even know existed!

Iā€™m writing this blog post mainly for two reasons: the first is so that I can showcase my work, which Iā€™m quite proud of, and the second is in the hopes that a fellow MYP student might get inspiration from my project. Anyways, Iā€™ll tell you from the very beginning how I came up with the ideaā€¦

Ideation

Worksheet for coming up with Service as Action ideas

As I mentioned before, for this SA project, I wanted to do something more ambitious; I wanted to try out something that hasnā€™t been done as a SA project before. Thatā€™s why I thought it would be optimal for me to do something related to computer science, and especially web development, since it was one of the easiest ways to create real-life impact. This way, I could do something new (since I havenā€™t seen anyone creating a website for a SA project), as well as work on something that I like.

When I came back to school from summer break, I already had the idea of devloping a website, but I couldnā€™t narrow down into what type of website I was going to create. I had to build something that didnā€™t already exist (meaning that I couldnā€™t create our school website or the library website), but it still had to be useful.

It was when I saw the lost and found system located next to the school main desk that I came up with the idea of creating a lost and found website. It was quite imporatant since many of the students in our school seemed to use it reguarly, and I thought that it could function similar to the library database, where itā€™s lost items instead of books which are shown.

Our school building is used by three sister-schools, and as a whole, it is called FEM. Another reason this idea was perfect was because I could set the whole FEM organization as the community to serve.

Building the Wesbite

The only time I learned web development was in Havardā€™s CS50 course. Thatā€™s why I had no other option than to use Flask as backend. In creating the website, I constantly reminded myself the purpose of the website. My goal wasnā€™t to create the most aesthetically pleasing design, but to make it so that it was easy for the students in our building to use.

For the features that I hadnā€™t had the skills to implement (e.g., uploading photos), I used the help of Codex. I realized that since I wasnā€™t graded on how well the website functioned, but rather how well I executed steps during my proejct, I could use the help of AI if it could help me lead to the best possible output. By creating this website, I was able to learn a lot about web development, and I also learned how to use an AI agent for coding.

Deployment was also an issue, since I havenā€™t depolyed anything except for a github pages website for my homepage. Eventually, I was able to find out the website hosting company called PythonAnywhere, which allowed me to deploy my website for free given that I refreshed it every month.

Raising Awareness

Posters for created for raising awareness

I have initally began this project thinking that creating the website would be the most crucial part of this project, but I soon realized that the actual hard part was communication and promotion. Through this project, I sent a lot of emails to different teachers asking them for permission, and I also created posters to raise the awareness of the website. In fact, I even presented about the website in front of the whole school in asembly. I think that this stage really taught what projects were all about: it was all about constant communication and feedback. Although at first I found this process to be quite tedious, I found that I actually enjoyed this process.

Looking Back

Award for Service as Action project

Overall, I would say that this project was a success. One of the happiest moments regarding this project was when I recieved an award for this project, which I didnā€™t even know existed. I was awarded the ā€œService as Action Awardā€, which is given to students who have done an outstanding SA project. I was really happy to receive this award, and it was a great way to end this project. For my next SA project, Iā€™m also thinking of creating a website as I found that many people were interested in having websites dedicated for our school.

Clicky Stuff

These are some of the links that I think are worth sharing regarding this project: