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Local Elementary School Wins Odyssey Angel Project at OM World Finals

Big Cypress Elementary Team at Award Presentation
Kristi Oen
Big Cypress Elementary Team at Award Presentation

Odyssey of the Mind is an international creative competition that’s been around since the late 1970s that gets students to work together to solve problems, and build confidence and cooperation skills. Local schools compete, with the winners moving on to regional competitions, and it all culminates every year at the Odyssey of the Mind World Finals. During this year’s finals in Ames, Iowa, Big Cypress Elementary School in Collier County was recognized as the sole winner from the entire world for their Odyssey Angels Project.

 

The focus of Odyssey Angels projects is to find a way to make a positive change in their own community, and to then pass that project along to others to take home and use in their own neighborhoods. The Big Cypress team’s project taught people how to make sleeping mats for homeless people. They ran a booth for three days during the World Finals to teach other teams the process. We’re joined by one of the team members, Oen Frost, and the coaches Kristi Oen and Justin Messier, who also happen to be his parents. 

Copyright 2018 WGCU

Julie Glenn is the host of Gulf Coast Live. She has been working in southwest Florida as a freelance writer since 2007, most recently as a regular columnist for the Naples Daily News. She began her broadcasting career in 1993 as a reporter/anchor/producer for a local CBS affiliate in Quincy, Illinois. After also working for the NBC affiliate, she decided to move to Parma, Italy where she earned her Master’s degree in communication from the University of Gastronomic Sciences. Her undergraduate degree in Mass Communication is from the University of Missouri at Kansas City.
Mike Kiniry is producer of Gulf Coast Live, and co-creator and host of the WGCU podcast Three Song Stories: Biography Through Music. He first joined the WGCU team in the summer of 2003 as an intern while studying Communication at Florida Gulf Coast University.