Fighting Obesity Through biking

I took a class called Global Peace. This class was about looking into problems that we might not have even known exist and figuring out where they originate from. We learned about many problems such as racism which is very common in Chicago and many other places, affect our lives. Another massive problem is the clothing industry's way of producing clothes. What they do is have people in third world countries such as Bangladesh go to really bad factories that could collapse at any moment and have them work for hours. What we had to do for this action project was find a problem in our neighborhood. Then we had to try non-violent way to protest the problem and pose a solution. I chose obesity because I really don't like when people are overweight and could do something about it. This issue could be fixed with some simple exercise. What I did was make a video about how to mountain bike and hopefully, it will inspire people to go out and get exercise and get healthier. I posted my video on youtube so that people watch it and more people see it.

I'm addressing child obesity which falls under cultural and structural violence. It addresses culture violence because we don't put enough stress on being fit and healthy then people won't try and be fit. The reason this is also structural is because their neighborhood might not have parks or clubs that they can join so that they can exercise. So it doesn't encourage people to be healthy, and many parents don't encourage their kids to be fit. This leads to millions of children being overweight and unhealthy. This is a form of violence because many of these kids are unhealthy because they are being stopped from getting access to easy exercise.

This problem falls under mutual learning on the ladder of tolerance because they are learning but they aren't doing anything. It also could be understanding because understanding is a lot like mutual learning but a little better. Neither of these is good enough, we have to be at a celebration because that takes action. The reason this problem is happening is because people know the problems and how to fix them but they don't do anything about it.

There is an organization named Let's Move that is also fighting to decrease the number of people with obesity in the U.S. This website has a few different sections containing different information about obesity such as facts about obesity, how to eat healthy, how to get active, and how to take action. They give you activities that you can do such as the Fitbit challenge which is when you have a set workout goal and you have to achieve your workout goal by the end of the two weeks.

I used the Iceberg Model of Conflict Analysis. The first problem was infrastructure, that's a problem because there aren't enough safe roads and facilities for kids to go and get exercise at. My second problem was culture because American people don't put enough stress on being fit so people don't try to be fit and aren't encouraged to go outside and get exercise. Another problem I came up with is the lack of easy access to healthy food, and the easy access to fast food, fast food is a huge contributor to obesity. Possibly the biggest problem is the lack of information that is available on schools, schools need to have more information regarding health and have more health classes.

The purpose of this intervention is to bring attention to a growing problem and to encourage obese people to get out of the house and exercise. I put together a video teaching my sister how to mountain bike. I put this video together so that she gets a taste of something that she can do other than to sit indoors. This video is meant to encourage others to go outside and ride bikes, It's especially directed at those who need it. There are different ways of peacefully protesting these problems so I chose to do a teach-in which is number 50 on the list of 198 ways to peacefully protest. I chose this because it's a great way to bring attention to a problem such as obesity.

This plan directly aligns with Gandhi's Sarvodaya principle because it is definitely non-violent and it seeks to rise up from the bottom. My plan targets the people who are in bad neighborhoods as well as everyone else.

First I'm going to gather the parts to make my video. I'll have to gather bikes, cameras, students, and warm clothes to wear. Then I'll have to go outside and videotape my sister my mom and I riding bikes and me teaching them how to ride properly. After I gather enough video I'll make a final video that I'll post to blogger later. In this final video, I'm going to put together my videos into one longer one that has facts about obesity in it. This should bring awareness to the people watching it.

For this project, I will need two bikes that we already have, warm clothes that we already have, two students one above twenty-five one under eighteen, and finally, I will need a camera, I used a GoPro hero 3 black edition for this project. This project didn't cost me any money because I didn't have to buy anything separate from the materials I had.

I did my project in Lincoln Park by the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. I carried my plan out on Sunday, December 4th.

There wasn't really anything that could go wrong. But I did plan against the possibility of my sister or my mom injuring themselves before the project started. What I did was I contacted two of my closest friends who also mountain bike and I asked them if they could go if I needed them, they both said yes so even if the unlikely situation of my students getting injured did occur then I would be covered by them.

The method I'm using is very good way to fight against a health issue because youtube is a very popular site. People are constantly on it so attracts many many people that hopefully will click on my video and will be encouraged to try something new and hopefully learn something. They might realize how important and big this issue is and they might even be inclined to donate money towards this cause.

For the intervention, I made a video that showed me teaching my sister how to bike and it is meant to inspire others to go outside and exercise and try and get more fit. My props would be my bike and my sister's bike.

I documented my invention using my camera that I had a chest mount for. I also used an iPhone for the second part of the video.

I hope you learned something about either biking or obesity, get out and get some exercise!

I am Malala

I took a class called MDGs. We learned about the 8 MDGs and the 17 SDGs. We also read the book I am Malala over the summer and we now are doing a project combining the book and the SDGs & MDGs. This project is about how Malala lived, fought and survived. I asked people for their thoughts on Malala and explained if I agreed or disagreed. I also said what six SDGs went along with the book and wrote why they corresponded with the book. I choose Gender equality, Quality education, Peace Justice, No Poverty, Good Health, Clean Water and Sanitation.

How is Hong Kong being affected by pollution?

The class I took was called Water. We learned about how important and scarce water really is. In this unit we learned about glaciers and how they provide a massive amount of fresh water for people around them. Unfortunately glaciers are melting at a fast rate due to global warming and they won't be around much longer. For this project we had to focus on a certain city and write about the future climate. I studied Hong Kong and learned about how there could be a catastrophe caused by global warming. We also learned about cloud types and where certain clouds form in the atmosphere. All of this content is in the project.

  

Are you for Women's Equality?

The class I took was MDG's and You. This class is about the 8 MDG's and one of them is women's equality. That's what this essay is about. We learned how women are objectified and how they are paid differently than men. There are many more subjects of inequality such as domestic violence, education, and military all these are covered in my essay.

Have you ever seen your father hurt your mother? Have you ever wondered how America's education for females compared with China's? Have you ever wondered how China’s military treats women in comparison to the United States? The United States and China are two of the most powerful nations in the world, so how do they treat their women?

Domestic violence is a huge problem in most places around the world, we are going to focus on America and China. In America 1 in 3 women have been victims of physical abuse by a partner during some time in their lifetime (Statistics). 1 in 5 women have been victims of extreme physical abuse (Statistics). That means over 33% of America's population has fallen victim to domestic violence regular or severe. Education is another problem in the US. Education for women in the U.S is getting better, but it's still not how it should be. When Harvard first opened in 1636, no schools allowed women. It took 200 years since it has opened for any school to allow women (dosomething). Does that give you an idea of women inequality? Women equality in the U.S military is improving, but it's still not 100% equal (Globalfirepower). Right now, about 220,000 positions are closed to women (Globalfirepower). But next year, all jobs are open to women (Globalfirepower). So it is getting better in the U.S.

In China, 61% of Asian women report experiencing physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner during their lifetime.That equals 3 in every 5 women (Statistics). 83% percent of perpetrators were men (Statistics) . There is obviously a massive problem with domestic violence around the world it has become a virus, but it's not the only problem. In China the situation is even worse than the U.S education women have a lower literacy rate than men (25 surprising facts about china's education system). Also, the percentage of women students at high-end universities in China is falling (25 surprising facts about china's education system). In China there really isn't any women inequality in the military because women have been in the military for a long time (Globalfirepower).

These two countries are fairly similar they both have domestic violence problems that are on a similar scale. They also have similar education problems, but the only difference is one is getting better and one is getting worse. America has been getting better for many years but China is going down in women inequality and education. They also currently very similar in military and the reason I say similar is because China has allowed women to fight since the time they started but the U.S is only now letting women become troops. As of next year the U.S will become as equal as China in terms of military.

In conclusion, the two countries have a few thing they can learn from each other. First off China needs to learn how to keep their women in school, the U.S knows how to do this. Second China has something to learn about domestic violence because the rates in China are much higher than the domestic rates in the U.S. And third the U.S has to learn about letting women in their ranks, as China has been doing for Centuries.

ArtsyBee. (2016) Equality. Web:Pixabay

"11 Facts About Education in America | DoSomething.org ..." N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2016.

"China Military Strength - Global Firepower." N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2016.

"Statistics: Violence against API Women | Research ..." N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2016.

Why Waste your Water

The class I took was called water. We learned about water filters, how they work and why people need them. Filters are similar to the earth because the earth has different layers and that's similar to the way my filter was made. My favorite part of this course was when we went to the water filtration plant and saw where Chicago gets its water. It was amazing to see the massive plant that manages to produce 1 million clean gallons of water per minute.

D.S (2016) Filter Poster

Materials

• Cup
• Gatorade bottle
• Sand
• Gravel
• Foam
• Stick

I got my materials from friends and from my teacher.

Step 1- Put a piece of foam into the cup

Step 2- Put sand on top of the foam

Step 3- Put gravel on top of the sand

Step 4- Put another piece of foam on top of the gravel

Step 5- Then out bigger pieces of gravel on top of the foam 

Step 6- Then add sand and another layer of foam

Step 7- Then put the Gatorade bottle under the Starbucks bottle 

I used this filter design because it is similar to other filter designs because it has the different layers and the water catching device at the bottom.

My filter works because the water goes through the different layers of water and the different layers take out the contaminants.

My filter is similar to underground filtration because they both have different layers of materials that filter out contaminants.

The source of my water is river water but I added many contaminants such as mushrooms, screws and other things. The original ph was 3.6 and after it was 4.1 which means there was a difference of .5 this is in the acidic side of the scale.

10^-4.1=.000079

10^-3.6=.00025

3.16 diffrence in PH

Education Needs to be a Human Right

I took a class called MDG's and you. I learned about the 8 MDG's and the 17 SDGs which the UN wants to fix in the next thousand years. My favorite part of this class was the field experience that took us to the Chicago council on global affairs. We got to eat salmon and other good foods and the speech was very interesting they talked about women's rights and they had women in from Africa, South America, and the U.S. In this class we also learned about countries and where they were in the world. I also learned where all the countries in the middle east were.

Hermann. Books. Web: Pixabay 

“A child miseducated is a child lost” said John F. Kennedy, and he's right. 757 million adults are less educated than you and that's just in Africa (Africa Library Project-Africa Facts). How can we let people suffer from things as simple as having speaking, reading, and writing skills? The reason I think that all children need to complete school is because under education is the main reason of poverty. People without an education will only grow up and not be able to do anything. If you aren't able to speak properly and be able to write simple things then how are you going to get a job and make a living? We need to make sure that all children complete school.

Places like Africa will never get out of poverty if the people there are not educated. It is a massive cycle and when the children are not educated then what happens when they grow up? They do the same thing their parents did which was nothing. There's a chart called Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs that is a chart that shows and categorizes the needs of humans. Education falls under the safety category of Maslow's hierarchy because if a person cannot get a job then they can't afford a home, and they are exposed to the elements and to other people who are stealing. More than 1 in 3 adults in Africa cannot read and 48 million youths (ages 15-24) are illiterate in Africa. That's 20 times more people than who live in Chicago (Africa Library Project-Africa Facts).

Imagine if every year, this earth had millions of more people who can contribute the society and come up with ideas. A higher percentage of young adults (31%) without a high school diploma live in poverty compared to the 24% of people who did finish high school. If these kids were to even finish high school, then we would have a smaller number of people in poverty.

Getting everyone an education should be easy. I say this because Americans could literally stop buying soda for a year, and we would have enough to educate everyone. Every year Americans spend an average of 65 billion dollars (Africa Library Project-Africa Facts). We are just very greedy people.

Basic education needs to be a right because it will propel the world further. How many Einsteins do you think are just waiting to be uncovered? Educating everyone will mostly demolish poverty.


Work Cited

“Africa Library Project-Africa Facts”. The African library Project N.p.,n.d.web.02 oct.2016.

“Facts about children education and poverty in America.” Dosomething.org.N.p.,n.p.web.02.oct.2016.

H20 For Change

The class I took this unit is called water I learned about how much water I use and how much water the world uses. I really like going to get water at the river and I finally understood how bad people have it in other places. For my action project, I showed my water usage compared to America and the rest of the world.

How much water do you use? To give you an idea the average American uses about 151.8 gallons of water per day. That's a lot of water. The entirety of America uses about 48,272,400,136.6 gallons of water a day. Lake Michigan has about 6 quadrillion gallons which mean if every American drank from only lake Michigan the lake would run out of water in about 360 years which is not a lot when compared to the 200000 years humans have been alive. This shows how little water we really have. That's not considering the people who will be born in the future.

I divided my water usage into 4 categories which are cleaning, hygiene, drinking, and other. I used the most for Hygiene which was 38.3% or 23 Gallons. Second was cleaning at 33.3% which is 20 gallons of water. The third was other it was 26.7% or 9 gallons. And the fourth was drinking because I drank about a gallon a day.

The average person in the UK uses about 150 Liters per day. I use an average of 194.11 liters per day which is 40.11 Liters more than the average UK resident. This goes to show that Americans use much more water than they need to because I use a third of the water of a normal American and still use more than the average UK resident and they use a lot compared to many countries such as Nigeria that use about 45 liters a day. And even they don't use the least amount of water.

Less than one percent of all the world water is drinkable. And even out of that much of the water is hard to access. That's the reason water is so rare in places like Africa.

DS(2016) Water AP