Portfolio Reflection - Trimester 2

Throughout this trimester, my wheel subject was GLOBAL ISSUES. I have learned many things about conflicts, disparity, barriers to development and how to make the world better. This class was unusual because everything we learn keeps changing, sometimes it feels challenging because we are only 7th graders and the problems seem so huge for us, we realized that many of the issues we discussed actually had no answers, we tried to be environmentally friendly and use no paper and we learned about issues and also had a role in educating other people in the MS too. Other classes are not like this.

The SCHOOL WIDE LEARNING RESULTS all apply to this class, however I feel that LIVING ETHICALLY fits best. Some things that we did to live ethically were to:

• Challenge the Friday Flash paper copies
• Trying to reduce electricity
• Looking at our MW carbon footprint and trying to replant trees
• Organizing AIDS DAY activities, raised money and make people more aware
• We donated food to Haiti through www.freerice.com 
• We played simulation games about sustainable farming and life in Haiti
• We spoke in front of the school about AIDS and MALAYSIA WEEK

and many other things!

My portfolio reflection for this class is below:

For our portfolio, Vidya and I decided to make a poster. We decided to have a border of words, showing what we have learnt and how we have felt throughout this course. In the center of our poster we put a picture of a globe with a banner across it saying "Collaborating Constructively To Change The World". I wrote this to link to our SLRs. I chose collaborating constructively because I believe that in this class that is what we were doing. We had many class discussions and spent a lot of the time working on our action projects. Such as the trees project, the AIDS day project and the Friday flash project. Through all of these I learnt a lot about the world.

Ayiti- The cost of Life

Ayiti- The Cost of Life.

A game based on Haiti

Playing the game

Playing the game was shocking. It made me realize that the choices I was making in the game, real life people had to make also. The thought that someone might have to send their family to work even though they may have Cholera or Bloody diarrhea really makes me think. Can life really get so bad that you have to send sick people to work?

It made me aware of how difficult life in Haiti obviously is. It showed how once you are in the cycle of poverty; it is very tricky to get out of it. The game is a game of luck but you do also have to make choices, some of them cruel and difficult to make. Some decisions may kill one person but save another. For instance, someone may be extremely ill and another person very ill, you would have to send the very ill person to work so that the extremely ill person could get the treatment they need. The game showed how hard life in a 3^rd world country can be. You could be soaring one season with 500 goud then the next season only 53 goud. It’s all about choices. The choices I made were mostly short term planning and more to do with now than to do with the future.

I think health is the right strategy to use, if you can’t keep everyone healthy, they will die or will not be able to go to school or work. If they can’t work, the others in the family would be unable to go to school or be treated for their illnesses. Therefore, I chose the health strategy.

As soon as I started sending the women to school things got a little bit better because the women had much more work opportunities than men. I only really sent the women to school, I sent the men to work because they are meant to be strong enough to survive the hard but decent paying jobs such as Rum Distiller. I found that when you got an education the jobs got less dangerous and higher paying. In conclusion, the best strategy to use is sending the people to school so that they can get a better chance career-wise. I also found that getting a bike helped a lot because you could get better jobs. I decided that sending the little boy to school would be pointless because the little boy is too young to work.

I think parents choose to devote a lot of effort to sending their children to school because they want them to be successful and get good, high-paying, risk-free jobs. They probably don’t want their children to follow their footsteps because they are really struggling to survive. The sad thing is that it costs a lot of money to send kids to school so when I played, I was only able to keep one of the children, the elder boy, in school. I was, however, able to get a little bit of vocational education for the parents which helped a lot. A main obstacle that prevented me from being able to keep the kids in school was money. Sometimes you would have to send someone to hospital so the kids would have to work to pay the hospital bills. Another obstacle was health and happiness. Sometimes the kids were too ill or depressed to go to school.

I found that the situations and options in my community are so different from the ones in the games. For instance, I would never ever be sent to work until I was older but in the game quite often I had to send the kids to work.

Access to education might be a challenge in another country because it costs a lot and quite often the money the adults earn is not enough to send all the kids to school. Also there are probably not very many teachers and the teachers that are there may be not very good.

Maybe if the education was cheaper or even free and the salary for less dangerous jobs was higher, it might have been easier to get an education. Also maybe if the health was better and cheaper they would not be sick and unable to go to school. These are all barriers to development. If these basic needs were achieved, it would definitely benefit the general community and help the children get an education.

All children deserve the chance for the best life possible; I think that this is what the game is trying to say.

Information about Haiti

With 80% of its population living under the poverty line and 54% in abject poverty, Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. The country is mostly a Christian country and the main language is Haitian Creole. Around 66% of the population work in small farms earning them very little money. Over 225,000 children have been forced to become slaves because of extreme poverty.

Haiti is home to the most dangerous place on Earth (according to the United

Nations), Cite Soleil. Cite Soleil is the biggest slum in Haiti and is home to roughly 250,000 Haitians, most of whom are living in extreme poverty.

The lives lived by the Haitians may have been made worse by the treacherous Earthquake that occurred recently.

Life in Haiti

I think that, due to the recent treacherous Earthquake that occurred, the streets will be full of scenes of devastation. I think there will be children climbing on top of ruined buildings looking for food. I imagine that it would feel terrible for them having to search and search through ruins for food. Before the Earthquake I think that life would have felt easier to the Haitians, but because of the Earthquake they spend their time praying and searching for food and their loved ones. I think that it is terrible that they should have to cope with all this.

We helped save a person living on World AIDs day...

On World AIDS day 2009, we helped treat one person living with AIDS in Malaysia for most of the year. I am glad that we did this because, although it is only 1 person out of 33 million, I think that every little helps. I think that the video that we made was effective and moving. I heard someone say that they were moved to tears with the overall assembly. This shows that people obviously cared and became more aware of the risks. When I found out that people had cried during the assembly I was pleased that we had been able to express how serious AIDS is. I think that us educating people and making them more aware of the risks is the first step to changing the world and preventing the spread of AIDS. I think I will always remember that I moved someone to tears. I was amazed that people could care so much about others in trouble. Next year I think that GI students should make ‘red’ tee shirts. I was happy that lots of people took that little bit of effort to dress up in red or wear an Angkor Watt tee shirt. I was also pleased that lots of people wore red ribbons. People all over the world fundraised for AIDS. Many different events have happened to raise money for HIV/AIDS, from Britain to Australia; infact, all over the world people came together to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS. I found one very inspiring quote made by Gary, a 33-year old living with HIV aids.

“I was diagnosed with HIV seven months ago. It has made me more conscious about my health and made me realise what is important. It isn’t all doom and gloom, life carries on as normal. HIV is no longer a death sentence. It is hard, very hard but once you have been diagnosed it’s good to know that you are being looked after by the doctors. No matter what – life goes on, I don’t suffer with HIV, I live with it”

Gary describes how you can still live with HIV/AIDS and enjoy your life. He describes how we can help people with HIV/AIDS and that they should not be discriminated just because they live with HIV/AIDS. Doing this action project made me realise just how little it costs to treat one person. It also made me realise how many people live with HIV/AIDS.

"HIV: Reality." World AIDS Day. Hugo & Cat, 2009. Web. 16 Dec. 2009. .

AIDs day is coming up!

December 1st, AIDS day is coming up and our global issues class are going to raise money for it. Everyone is doing something to help and I am going to help with music. I think maybe in the assembly we could have a few videos and a group of people talking about aids and stating clear, simple and empowering facts about it. The speech should end with all of the speakers saying "WE CAN STOP AIDS" together. We could have a bake sale to fundraise for AIDs and maybe a ribbon hunt.

Poverty must stop!

All over the world people are starving, children are dying and things need to change. We all have to work together to make the world a better place, the first step is educating people about what is happening around the world, otherwise things will not change. We all need to open our eyes and see the world around us. That is what Global Issues is for, opening our eyes. If we don't open our eyes, the world will never change and poverty will never end. You may be thinking now, why should I care? You should care because if these things do not change, the world will never be a better place, it is up to us to try and stop poverty.

"The freedom of man, I contend, is the freedom to eat."
- Eleanor Roosevelt.

The quote explains how everyone has the freedom to eat, not just the rich people who can afford it. If people can't eat, then they can't live. Little children born in poor countries are dying of starvation, they don't even have a chance to live like a normal child because their stomachs are always empty and they can't afford food. Things like this need to change, we all need to work together if we want to change the world. The poor children in poverty deserve to eat, just like every other human being.