Soap made from scratch by the students of Westwood LEADS.

Westwood LEADS is an after school leadership program at Westwood Middle School in Winter Haven. This program uses leadership skills using different progressive activities all leading up to the goal of helping young people become better leaders.

Service projects are incorporated into the LEADS program and Westwood students discussed different projects that they could do at the school. These students decided that they wanted to make their own soap and donate it to a program or organization that could use it. After using GPS (Growth Mindset, Pursuit of Strategy, Shifting Gears) to plan out the project, it was decided that they wanted to make the soap and gift it to the teachers and administrators as a “thank you”.

The teens decided how much soap base they needed, what colors they wanted to incorporate, which fragrances they wanted, and what shapes the bars of soap would take. Students then melted the soap base, added the coloring, fragrance, and then poured the mixture into molds that they had chosen. Rubbing alcohol was then sprayed on top of the molds, and they were placed on ice in a cooler for 30 minutes. Once the soap had hardened, is was removed from the molds.

Students produced enough soap for 73 staff at Westwood Middle School. Students placed the soap in bags with a note for each staff member. Those bags were then places in the staff’s mailboxes.

Well done Westwood LEADS!