You And The World Blog post #3: Agent Of Change.

Hello, everyone! It is Fodie Camara. I’m in the 9th grade and a student of Science Leadership Academy. In English class we were asked to write three blogs about something that we care about. I picked the issue of hunger. To me this a very important topic. If you don’t remember, my first blog post, talked about hunger-related facts and how it affects kids and the local community. My second blog post talked about my interview with my Advisor and the Food Can Drive that I’m organizing.

So for my third and final blog post, I’d like to talk about what people are actually doing to stop hunger. There are a lot of things that are currently happening to stop hunger. People and organizations are trying to raise awareness so more people can know about my topic of hunger in our society. This is definitely taking advantage of social media like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. They’re also setting up Food Can Drives in more and more schools to then donate and distribute to the needy. And more and more groups like Stop Hunger Now, Coalition Against Hunger and Philabundance, continue to form.

Food Can Drives are helpful because it immediately provides support for the hungry people in our city. The previous school I went to- Penn Alexander- maintained a Food Can Drive throughout the eight years I was there, and it was a success every single year. We had about 1,500 cans collected last year alone, and that was in only a couple of months. It’s common for us to see campaigns that raise awareness on Facebook and even Twitter account, and this motivated me to do the same.

There about 650,000 hungry people in the central part of Philadelphia alone! Image how many more people are hungry in our country? I pursue being an Agent of Change by actually staying to my word and organizing a Food Can Drive at my current school- Science Leadership Academy- because I wanted to continue what I worked on previously.  While I know this won’t make a huge difference with  hunger in Philadelphia, maybe other people will start their own because they see how successful mine was.

At the start of this Agent of Change project I didn’t really know how I was going to do this Can Drive. I had a sense of what I was going to do, but I started out with nothing and then went step by step like getting a box and putting it in the Advisory Memo to inform people that they could donate cans. I felt that I did a pretty good job on this project, especially starting the Can Drive as I was getting more and more cans everyday. I learned about myself as well in this project. I now know that I can really get something done by putting in effort and focus. I learned that other people felt the same way that I did because they brought in cans too and did their part in trying to make a difference.

I think I could have done better by presenting my project because I didn’t get a huge amount of cans at first, and I should have presented my topic in every Advisory in advance of the Drive so  I could get more cans and more people to know about my topic. I could have also done better by putting two boxes on each floor and putting signs in the hallways. I’m still proud of what I accomplished, but it could have been better.

I’d like to thank everyone who donated and helped me to make this Food Can Drive a success. Shoutout to Ms.Dunn for helping me with every step throughout this long process, and also a shoutout to Mr.Herman for being the best Advisor for helping me get the box and everything!