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Website link: https://empresselona.wixsite.com/theempressline

Link to annotated bibliography: https://docs.google.com/a/scienceleadership.org/document/d/1KqZpXuhPPNbYim1XowsFBjSkMPE3rpAd7rtsNZG_NXE/edit?usp=sharing

Blog Post #2

Siarra Cummings

Feeding Starving Children

In my first blog post I told you guys that I decided to do my project on feeding starving children. My first post was basically about my views on the issue and my passionate reasons on making this more aware. I talked about different organizations I would like to get involved with like feed my starving children organization. Also a little background story on why I chose to do my You and the World project about this topic.   

I decided to go deeper in my research of starving children and I looked at the whole world and what they were doing about it. One of the website I came across is Do Something. Do something is an organization that lists facts about world hunger and gets the word out.  They do different campaigns across the world and take action on feeding starving children. 98% is the percentage of world hunger that is in underdeveloped countries. Most countries in Asia and Africa has the highest count of people suffering from hunger. 1 in 15 children die from being malnourished in underdeveloped countries as well. Sometimes it’s not about whether or not a parent can feed a child, it’s about where they live and if they have enough resources to get food. Some parents don’t have the right resources to get out of the places they live and affects their family and them as well. The organization’s main focus is on everyone not just children and I think that’s important too.  

This is a map from Unicef about children in different countries dieing from hunger related issues. Most of the children dieing reside in Africa and Asia as I stated in the last paragraph. Every 10 seconds a child dies from hunger related issues and it’s sad.  We lose about 3 million children every year from cases like this. That’s why I wanted to research this problem and see what people were doing about it. The problem is decreasing since organizations like FMSC and the Hunger Project have gotten involved.

In my research I have learned a lot of things about my topic. People are aware of starving children and they are doing something about it. I decided to research more on what people are doing about it and what countries are doing well with helping others. Most of you already know about the Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) organization that was stated in my last blog post. They are one of the biggest organizations worried about this problem in the world but we need more. I decided to look up organizations that were helping kids with hunger and a website that popped up was Save The Children.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to complete my interview for my project but I did get most of my questions answered from the Feed My Starving Children organization. I already knew that they were a Christian organization but I wanted to know why. When I talked to one of the ladies that worked at the organization she said the it’s God who call them out to give food to the malnourished children. Like when I went to one of their packing sites every time they ship food out to children they don’t know sometimes if it’s actually gonna get there (thankfully 99% of the meals get where they need to go). So they pray over the food and I think it was a wonderful thing to experience and watch. One of their main saying is food is the foundation, it all starts with the food. As of now they have 3 nutritional based foods. Each pack of food serves a different purpose. They have Manna Pack Rice which is their first product and what they make the most of. They get volunteers to actually make these Manna Pack foods so we can all help and have that purpose.

Check out my annotated bibliography for more!

In the previous blog post, I talked about two things: deep poverty in Philadelphia and hunger as a result of it. In this blog, I’ll be talking about the same thing, except it’ll be told by a woman who has been through the worst possible situations. But before I tell her story, I have to inform the new viewers about what deep poverty is.

This is a picture my mom took of me while writing down notes I took when I was conducting my interview. I was writing down what the lady was saying and made notes to myself.

Deep poverty is when someone is living under the income of $6,000 a year. The difference between poverty and poverty is that you would have to be making under $20,000 a year to be considered living in deep poverty. Even though Philadelphia has the highest number of people who are living in deep poverty within the Nation’s most 10 populous cities, it has a low range of homeless people living on the streets. About half the people living in poverty are living in deep poverty. I personally thought with the amount of people living in deep poverty that the number of homeless people would be more than 700 in Philadelphia.

This is a picture of me talking to the lady. I was asking her a question about her experience with hunger.

For the original research plan, I conducted a formal interview about a 26 year old African American’s experience. I was originally going to do a field observation, but I couldn’t arrange a time for one. The questions that were asked to the person I interviewed were basic, straightforward questions. I’m going to include some question and answers that I think are important to hear. I started off the interview by saying my name and what the interview was about; Kyla Gladney-Enos and deep poverty. I then told the time and the date; 7:19 PM on May 5, 2017.

The first question was, “How long have you lived in deep poverty and what was your experience like?" She answered, “Umm, I’ve been living in deep poverty since I was about 16. It’s kind of hard, but if you know how to make it work, then it’s not as hard as you think it is.” I didn’t know a lot of people have budget plans, but they do. I’m starting to think more and more people are coming up with plans. The second question was, “Did you ever experience hunger? If so, how did you manage paying your bills and feeding yourself? If not, what did you do to help yourself not be hungry?” She answered, “Umm, yeah, I experienced hunger a couple times. Uh, I would just like work. If I was working, I would always try to pay half of the bills, and try to buy food with the other money.”

This is a picture of my work after I was finished taking notes. The left monitor has the interview questions, while the right monitor has my notes.

Writing the questions were not that hard. I didn’t spend a lot of time stressing over my questions. While I was asking the questions, I should have asked more questions about her answers because that would have given me a deeper look into her life. My questions were answered the way I wanted them to be answered. She answered them in complete sentences and gave a brief synopsis of her experience. I already knew a lot about this topic, so I didn’t really learn anything shocking, but some of the things she said surprised me. I personally think kids who grow up in poverty have a hard time getting out of it because that’s what they know. I’m still wondering how people who are living in deep poverty don’t wind up being homeless because as time goes on, prices of simple things start to increase. For my Agent of Change part of this project I think I’ll make a care package for the lady I interviewed. I’ll have nice quotes and museum information that she could use.

Writing music is hard, and writing good music is even harder. These were the two main thoughts that ran through my mind while completing my Capstone. My original project idea was to write a full album, but as time went on and I evolved as an artist, I noticed not all of my music was inspired by the same ideas. There was no central theme between songs and I did not feel right about producing a bunch of music just to reach the count needed for a full album. So out of the 10 songs I have written, I took the 4 most recent and made them into an EP, and I cannot say how happy I am with my decision to do so.

I learned a lot in the process of making this EP. The main takeaways I gathered were that collaboration is key, time management is huge, and preparing for failure is a must. Throughout the school year I learned so much about who I wanted to be as an independent artist, but really I learned the most while actually recording my songs. After 2 failed attempts, I was finally able to record my music much later than I anticipated. Due to time constraints I was unable to perfect my vocal recordings as much as I would have liked to, but nonetheless I am proud of what I have done.

Throughout this year I have been working with Wordsworth to complete my capstone. The community umbrella agency changes the lives of families and guarantees that they will have a safe and healthy life. Wordsworth has the ability to help children conquer different behavioral problems, emotional, physical abuse, homelessness, and more. They provide homes for children and a safe environment for parents to come to when they need to see their children. My capstone consists of me working side by side with one of the directors to host an event for children who are traveling from home to home and need the basic toiletries to carry with them (toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, etc.) I had hoped that I would be able to have the gift bags set up on a table and as the families came in for a visit I could hand them out. However, after having a meeting with my mentor I found out that I was unable to take pictures of the families and personally give them the gift bags due to restrictions around confidentiality. Therefore, I left them at the agency and throughout the course of the week case managers brought a gift bag to each of the children. After completing this capstone project I have given a deeper thought into “it’s the little things that matter” because after coming back to see how everything went the families were grateful and the children were happy to have something of their own. In the end that made me feel good because I was able to be a catalyst for change.

Bibliography:

• "Turning Points for Children Community Umbrella Agency Services | Philadelphia, PA, Child Abuse Prevention, Foster Care Services." Turning Points for Children Community Umbrella Agency Services | Philadelphia, PA, Child Abuse Prevention, Foster Care Services. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Feb. 2017.

I included this source because it directly relates to my capstone. I am working with this agency and giving the baskets filled with toiletries to the case managers. They will hand them out to the families during “supervision” which is the time that a parent has to spend time with their child. This agency finds placement for children and offers opportunities for children to live better lives. As we know, these children are experiencing lot’s of different changes that aren’t necessarily positive, but having the necessities they need will be helpful and make them feel more comfortable when going to a new place.

• Statement:

This statement explains how the Community Umbrella Agency is helpful and this event will be beneficial to the children. It also gives a brief overview of some positions people have at the job and how they support the children. I am working side by side with the director to grasp an understanding of how things work, what days will be good to host the event, etc. Also, this statement written by my outside menor gives some insight on how my capstone is personally useful and puts them at an advantage. I selected this source because I thought this was interesting a different type of source to include into my bibliography.

• "ACF Family Room Blog: New Data will Benefit Foster Children and Adoptive Families." Child Welfare Information Gateway. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Feb. 2017.

This source provides information about child welfare and foster care among children in America. I selected this source because it gives a better explanation of what the agency's purpose is and how my capstone can be applied. It explains the process and how things work within the organization. Lot’s of resources are incorporated into this source and it allows you to view the different types of data and statistics. This source is helpful if you are trying to understand the procedure. This source isn’t directly related to my project, but it gives some background of the overall point of this source.

• Article: CNN. Cable News Network, n.d. Web. 03 Feb. 2017.

This source provides information about how foster children have little to no support and resources in their lives. Often foster children are moved from home to home until they reach 18 and they aren’t given anything. My capstone provides small toiletries (soap bars, shampoo, toothpaste, etc.) so that they have some things to travel with. This will ensure that they are more comfortable and have some things for themselves. I found this source useful because children aren’t always comforted properly when going through these different changes in their lives so they need all the help that can be given to them.

• University, Princeton. "The Future of Children, Princeton - Brookings: Providing research and analysis to promote effective policies and programs for children."  - The Future of Children -. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Feb. 2017.

Children who are in foster care are more at risk when it comes to behavior problems and expressing their emotions. Often they travel from home to home and have nothing of their own. My capstone gives them a chance to have somethings with them and make their stay at different places more pleasant. This source also fits into my interests and life goals because I want to reach out to the community and be able to perform outstanding works of community service. I feel like I could improve the community service and this project would be a great way to get involved.

• "For reasons of poverty: a critical analysis of the public child welfare system in the United States." Choice Reviews Online 27.10 (1990): n. pag. Web.

This source is in a form of a book and it explains the safety permanency and well being of children in the Philadelphia county child welfare system. This book includes different fields pertaining to social work, psychology, sociology etc. I selected this source because it helps to clarify several different concepts related to my topic. Having sources that aren’t directly related, but still apply are important because they give an overview of everything. This will provide the audience with some evidence of the job description and how children are put into place for different things. Also, books give a deeper understanding of things and make you view things from a different perspective.

• Kortenkamp, Katherine, and Jennifer Ehrle Macomber. "The Well-Being of Children Involved with the Child Welfare System: A National Overview." Katherine Kortenkamp. The Urban Institute, n.d. Web. 03 Feb. 2017.

I selected this source because the children experience a lot of trials and tribulations throughout their life. They are forced to leave their homes and move from place to place without any of their belongings sometimes. Having my capstone at this place will help the children to feel more secure and like they have something of their own. Children in the welfare system don’t usually feel at home and experience a lot of emotional issues. Creating baskets filled with toiletries and taking time to focus on them individually will mean a lot and be very useful. These children should be put first.

• "Minority Children and the Child Welfare System: An ..." N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Feb. 2017.

Even when children are put into the system they aren’t always treated the best. If they have some type of support then they can feel like they can depend on someone. I selected this source because it has some statistics, research studies, and more. It provides information about foster children in general and how the process works and what happens. My senior capstone is for all children and on this website it talks about discrimination that occurs between the children and other negative things. This article makes good points about children in the welfare system and examines many different things.       

• Robertson, Marjorie J. "Homeless Youth: Research, Intervention, and Policy." N.p., n.d. Web.

Children who are apart of the system have experienced some type of abandonment and have to learn to cope with that. These children experience different types of abuse, go through intellectual problems, and more. Although my capstone won’t fix these issues it will assist them when it comes to needing something and having that feeling of knowing someone cares. This policy that I read talks about mental health, different studies, and homelessness among children. This isn’t exactly a source that would usually be used for my topic, but it does have a few points that talk about problems, changes, history, etc.

• "Homeless Children and Youth." Google Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Feb. 2017.

I selected this source because unlike the source above it is in a form of a book so it’s more personal. It identifies the youth; struggle and more. Many people overlook the type of baskets I’m going to prepare for the children, but in reality they are much needed. The agency I’m working with is open and focused on the well being of children and making sure they are first. The agency is involved with the families and interacts with them often so that everyone that comes in feels like they have a place. Working side by side with this agency is beneficial to them and also helps me.

Baking has alway been a passion of mine. Though I bake all the time there are many avenues of baking I haven’t explored. For my Capstone I am creating a Bakery Blog called Mad Batter. To create my blog I will be using wix.com. With this blog I will be baking different desserts and writing about my progress or faults as a baker, the difficulties of the dessert, and how much my friends/family liked it. I was also able to learn more about baking in general and will be sharing my opinions on the perfect desserts. As a senior I am trying to determine a career to choose, since baking is a prominent part of my life I would like to explore this passion and maybe be able to determine if this is a career I want for the rest of my life. Since I will be baking I had a chief as my mentor, her name is Kimberly White. She has recently graduated from a culinary school and has baking training so it was great to learn some of her skills. Even though this project was for a my capstone I had so much fun cooking and experimenting with different recipes.

In my last Slate Post, I talked about the interview with a former hunter Matthew Ossowski. This time, I went bigger. The last post was all about poaching. I did even more research and learned new things about poaching. Most of this information is local. I surveyed 58 people, and these were my results.

For this post, I was wondering how much people actually know about poaching and how they would answer. I got my results by making the survey. These results helped my research because I saw poaching through other people’s eyes.  What people don’t know is the poachers feel. I found a website that interviewed an actual elephant poacher about his experiences. This is what I found:

The poacher (I will call him “the poacher” because I don’t want to intrude privacy) said that he only went hunting at night. He said that he did it for money for his family. He also said that he felt inhuman, like he didn’t want to but felt like he had to, so he did. He said that his family didn’t know he did this, that could never know. The only thing they knew was that he had a job, he then went home like nothing happened and was a normal father. The jail life changed him. He wasn’t allowed to go outside. They said he had done the worst crime than anyone else in there.

After he got out, he knew things had to change. When he did get out, he went straight to the wildlife authorities to get a job. The interviewer asked about what he would do to stop the elephants from being poached, he had the same idea that I did, to teach people the importance of the animals that are being poached.

Now that I have seen through the eyes of a poacher, I see why he did it. Although it was a bad choice and there were other options, I understand why he did it, not saying that I would do it, because I wouldn’t. However, my opinion has changed a little. Like Mr. Ossowski said in my last slate post, “ however if you're doing it to feed your family because you're poor, you know legally yeah it's wrong, if you're just doing it to eat, okay. But if you're doing it just to kill something or make money or something. I don't agree with that.”. This poacher was doing just that, making money for his family, any money he made would go straight to his six kids and wife.

Although I have done all this research over the course of this project, I am still wondering how cold hearted people have to be to actually start poaching. Unlike the poacher I wrote about who acted upon family, some people do it for other reasons such as to sell them to companies, some people work for the companies and people make them into jewelry.

For my “Agent of Change” portion of my project, I will set up a group to talk about the subjects of animal poaching, and the importance of just some of the animals that are being poached. Or I will make website so everyone can see it, and talk about the topics I mentioned.

If you want more information on these websites, please visit me Annotated Bibliography.

For my capstone, I teamed up with Jared Bauer to teach a class at Science Leadership Academy Middle School (SLAMS) on sports statistics.  Jared and I are co-founders of the Sports Statistics and Analysis Club at SLA so we wanted to do a capstone together based around our club.  We decided that we wanted to teach middle school students about sports statistics.  Studies have shown that students that have a hard time learning math in the early stages of their education career, will have a harder time learning math later on.  Jared and I believed that sports statistics is a fun and easy way to learn basic math skills so we decided on teaching sports stats as our capstone.  After trying to reach out to our respective middle schools, we decided that we wanted to teach our lessons at SLAMS because of the connect the two schools already had.  We worked with Mrs. Hamilton, a math teacher at SLAMS.  We coordinated with her for lessons and when we would come in.  We also worked with Mrs. Bushnell, our in-house mentor, do help us make lessons for our classes.  Our capstone was made up of 4 classes.  We also created a project for our students to complete during the classes that they would then present to us on the fourth class  The first three classes were us teaching them different sports stats and allowing them time to work on their projects.  The project was them calculating different stats of their favorite MLB or NBA player.  On the fourth class, all the students presented their projects to us and then we ended with an ice cream party to celebrate their projects.  

Link to Photos https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B7A7F0ZYyhrrYUNIMUV1aHltckk?usp=sharing

Link to Project Description

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MM7lFjwAXWp5o9QNQi35hdaNxYYuUkJjC8AOLYq6DfI/edit?usp=sharing

Link to Lesson Template

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sxks3MuOejhPRwo_01tttaUKPNMtp7eGXkp-xlgtqEw/edit?usp=sharing

Link to Annotated Bibliography

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EBvSg6shXTOKPBEm4PKCiaS1k3h1HZ9IvvYB6FUJN-o/edit?usp=sharing

In my first blog post I talked about my personal experience with domestic violence as well as someone else's. I talked a lot about my father and my step father. My mother's father was an abuser  so she married another abuser thinking it was normal. I talked about another woman who went through an awful relationship where she was abused both physically and mentally. She was kept away from her family and friends for what she thought was love  

This is a picture from 2003 of me, my dad and my sister

For my original research I did an interview with  my mother. I saw her go through a lot of domestic abuse and I wanted other people to know her story. I asked 5 questions about her experience and the long lasting effects of domestic violence.

The first question I asked was “What’s your experience growing up and being married to an abuser?” She said that growing up with an abuser she made it seem normal. In her eyes everything wasn’t good or bad, just normal. She said she hated yelling and the constant anger around her house. “I hated the yelling.  That was probably the worst part as it never seemed to end and happened all the time.  Nothing was ever good enough for my father.”  Then when she grew up she married a man who was similar to her father. He yelled and threw things. Nothing was good enough for him either.  SHe had to lie to her friends about bruises and she wasn’t allowed out without his permission. She said canceling plans was a regular for her. He didn’t allow her to go out when she wanted to. “I routinely had to cancel plans with friends because I wasn't allowed to go out and I remember one time that we were supposed to meet a friend out for lunch and he would not even let me call to cancel because he was so angry, so I had to just have her waiting at a restaurant and us never show up.” She had to leave her friends waiting in restaurants because he wouldn't let her out.

The next question in my interview was “Why did you stay?” She said her main reason for staying how long she did was that she wanted a 2 parent home for me and my siblings. Her mom stayed with her father until all her kids were grown. My mom thought maybe things would get better. She thought that having a 2 parent home was better for us and she relied on the hope of everything getting better. “ My mom had stayed until we were grown and I thought that it would be better for you to grow up in a two parent home.  It had been my experience and I wanted that for my kids too.  I really normalized the experience and thought that in time, it would get better.  Clearly, that didn't happen.”

The third question was “How did you get out?” She said that she got out when my father left. He left once and came back. My mother being thinking things could still change she let him back. He then left again. This time she didn’t know where he went, she didn’t know when he would be back. Almost a year later he came back. My mom had been on her own for almost a year. She got her confidence back and knew she could do this on her own so she didn’t let him back. After that he was gone for good.

The fourth question was “What do you think now about your actions and choices then? What advice do you wish you could give yourself?” My mom said that looking back at everything she knows life was hard but she wouldn’t change it. After all this she has me and my siblings. She just hopes that we don’t have relationships like that in the future. She hopes that everything is better in the future.

The last question I asked her was “What were the long term effects after you you got out?” The main effects she mentioned was self esteem issues. “Depression and self-esteem issues are definitely long lasting impacts of the experiences I have had.”

I did some research about the long term effects of domestic violence. Many people experience depression. A lot of people feel unworthy of real relationships and healthy relationships. Other people experience post traumatic stress disorder. They suffer from flashbacks and nightmares.

There was a woman who was in abusive relationship for years. She was not only physically abused but she was verbally abused as well. Her abuser called her things like “whore” or “slut”. It took  her a while to finally recover after she was out of the relationship. She felt unworthy of a good healthy relationship. ALthough she finally got her life back, she will have to deal with these feelings of depression and anxiety for almost the rest of her life.

My Annotated Bibliography

Hello! Welcome back to my blog. If you didn’t read my first post, please read that first, so you will understand more about the topic that I am going to talk about. In my first blog, I talked about industries harming animals, for example, puppy mills, fur farms, pet stores not taking care of their animals. I talked about what secret industries do to animals and that they don’t tell anyone what they do to the animals. I am going to talk for them, to be the animals’ voices. This is important because a reasonable amount of people that took my survey knew about this, but not everyone. I am going to show what people know from looking from my survey. I want to show the world that animals are being harmed. I made a survey so it will help me see if people really do know if they know about this. The result were quite shocking.  

For our project, You and the World, we get to decide if we get to do a interview, survey or a field observation. For the past 2 weeks, we had to do an interview, survey, or field observations for our topic. For my topic I chose to do a survey. In my survey I asked questions like…

• If they are aware industries harming animals?

• What do they know about it?

• What do you know about puppy mills?

My results were surprising, not a lot of people know what puppy mills are or what industries are really doing, some of the results were just unnecessary or unhelpful. Here are the results below if they heard about puppy mills.

Results of ‘Have you ever heard about puppy mills?’

The survey that I made gave me a different perspective on what other people know about industries harming animals. I thought a good amount of people knew that industries are harming animals, but they didn’t know what is truly happening to them from looking at the results I received. It was proven that 84% of people were aware of industries harming animals and 16% of people didn’t know about it. In my survey, I asked a question “What do you know about industries harming animals?” lots of people said they don’t know, but there were a few people that went deep into this, “I know the fur industry can harm/injure/kill animals for their fur. Factory farms abuse animals and give them no room to move around in and have the animals live in their own filth. Puppy mills inbreed and leave dogs in small cages. I also know that zoos and circuses abuse animals to do tricks for them.” “I know that a lot of farms and and other industries that produce meat often times are where animals are sent to be slaughtered, and while they are there they are tormented, starved, squished and crowded together and have no relief. Their necks are broken, and many are fed things that make them larger but are unhealthy for their systems.” I was happy to see these informational result, but that is only a few people, I want more people to know about this problem.

I asked a question on my survey if they support industries harming animals and the results is above. As you can see 8% of people supported industries harming animals. 10% is neutral and 82% does not support industries harming animals. I want to change that and I need a solution.

Agent of Change is what is a solution or how you are going to help this situation. My Agent of change is I will be fundraising for a animal shelter. I want to do this because the government actually does not provide money to shelter which is crazy and sad. I am going to step up to provide money, by doing a fundraiser to a shelter, Paws.

Hopefully, this will be a trend, helping shelters. We will start off small then go on and help all animals around the world. I can’t do this alone so we can work together to stop this problem. For more information click here for my bibliography.

Capstone Bibliography

• Catarinella, Alex. "Our 5 Favorite Emerging Designers We Saw At Berlin Fashion Week."Grailed: Dry Clean Only. Grailed, 24 Jan. 2017. Web. 29 Jan. 2017. <https://www.grailed.com/drycleanonly/berlin-fashion-week-fw17>.

• This source is important for me specifically because of the fact that I am the creative director for our upcoming brand. The main goal for a creative director is to ensure that designs that are going to be showcased are ahead of current trends. They have to be ahead of multiple trends and this list from one of the most trusted menswear catalogues and sale site explains why these new designers are so great. This can be used to base multiple future designs on what clothing connoisseurs look for in order to gain attention the most attention.  

• Ginsberg, Allen . "Sunflower Sutra by Allen Ginsberg | Poetry Foundation." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, 1955. Web. 31 Jan. 2017. <https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/49304>.

• Our first project is dubbed, “The Sunflower Project”. There is an untold energy and art that the sunflower gives off that not everyone realizes. This is the piece in which our first release is based off of. Without this poem and the insight from Nigo, the sunflower project would have not sprouted.

• Haywood, Emma. “Painting on Textile Fabrics.” The Decorator and Furnisher, vol. 11, no. 5, 1888, pp. 180–180. www.jstor.org/stable/25585466.

• This source was extremely helpful even though it was about painting on furniture. Emma Haywood describes how to paint on fabric with oil paint. She states the dos and the don’ts very clearly. This was sourced because we plan on doing hand-painted merchandise as a promotional release before the first official release.

• Kiper, Anna. Fashion portfolio: design and presentation. London: Batsford, 2014. Print.

• Anna Kiper does a great job of covering the main components and concepts of designing apparel and a fashion portfolio. Most of the research conducted was about how to make a quality garment that will end up being successful in the real world. It is not as easy as it looks but Anna Kiper does a great job making it seem less difficult than it is.  

• Lengwiler, Guido. A History of Screen Printing. Cincinnati, Ohio: Cincinnati, Ohio : ST Media Group International, 2013.

• After multiple meetings, me and my partners have come to the conclusion that we want screen printing done on our shirts for the first couple of releases (no more than 3). There are many different ways to to screen print though and it is completely different from regularly printing a graphic on a shirt, one difference being that it is done by hand. Screen printing is much higher quality and that is what we want. This book explains the history of screen printing and covers multiple different techniques. This is essential for finding the best way to screen print since we only want to release high quality products.

• Mcquarrie, Edward F., and David Glen Mick. “Visual Rhetoric in Advertising: Text‐Interpretive, Experimental, and Reader‐Response Analyses.” Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 26, no. 1, 1999, pp. 37–54. www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/209549.

• Edward Mcquarrie covers the same topic that the Small Business Administration does except this looks at the art of advertisement through a more conceptual lens. This provides a more artistic view on what advertisement is and how do it successfully. This allows me to creatively grasp the concept of advertising in order to start creating more simple but original and creative ads.

• NIGO. Atorie bai nigo. N.p.: Magajinhausu., n.d. Print.

• Like Sunflower Sutra, this is another piece of writing that was an influence for me specifically. Nigo is the reason why the sunflower came into my mind in the first place. Atelier gives readers a peek into Nigo’s vast collection of, well… collectables. They are what influences him and draw out the genius that is Nigo. This book is also essential because it was another huge factor to starting The Sunflower Project.
  
  

• Sartain, William. “Thoughts on Art and the Art Collector.” The Art World, vol. 1, no. 4, 1917, pp. 276–278. www.jstor.org/stable/25587749.

• The art collector section is one that contains the most importance to me. Reason being that me and my colleagues want to, in the future, have many of our pieces be considered art. Why do collectors collect and why are collectors important? This source explains it. It talks about why collecting art is important and the type of art that typical collectors go for. This is very useful to me specifically because, like the Grailed article, I can base certain designs off of what collectors look for in art. Mixing fine art and great design with a great business plan ensures sales.

• U.S. Small Business Administration Editors. "Advertising: The Basics | The U.S. Small Business Administration." Advertising: The Basics | The U.S. Small Business Administration | SBA.gov. U.S. Small Business Administration , 2017. Web. 01 Feb. 2017. <https://www.sba.gov/managing-business/running-business/marketing/advertising-basics>.

• This source is important because it covers the basics of advertising. Whether it be food, a device, or clothes, advertising is crucial to getting the world to know about your products. Me and my partners have had no prior experience in marketing so being able to get tips from a trustworthy network is extremely helpful. We have not used all of the advice that this site provided but we have begun to implement multiple tips into our own advertisements.

• Wagner, Eric T. "10 Rules To Build A Wildly Successful Business." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 07 July 2014. Web. 31 Jan. 2017. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericwagner/2014/01/14/10-rules-to-build-a-wildly-successful-business/#42671bfde287>.

• This Forbes article contains a lot of valuable information for me and my partner. Although this is from a tea company owner’s perspective, this can be very useful because it touches on the business world in general. Applying some of these rules is essential in order for keeping a healthy business whether it be tea or anything else. Art and business are already a great mix, it is just a matter of being original and these business rules do not interfere with creativity and or originality.

In my first blog post, I introduced the topic of my You & The World Project, which is bullying LGBT+ children in schools. You can find that blog here. I talk about the types of insults children use, the statistics behind insults, and who people hear them from. I also talk about where bullying stems from, and how it affects children from a young age. That’s all in my first blog post.

I found a new source, talking about being openly gay in high school, and still hearing homophobic slurs from a water polo team. Tony Covell still heard homophobic slurs from his teammates in the locker room. The team would jokingly use the words and look at Covell, he would blow them off and ignore their ignorance. These boys knew their teammate and who he was, but day after day they continued to use these words. So why do people continue to use slurs and hate speech, even if they know someone's sexuality? Covell says it’s about the hate behind it. That being called a “faggot” is supposed to be offensive. Covell says “The term “faggot” is degrading — it gives a derogatory term to a word that in most cases are being used as a synonym for “gay.”

GLSEN, sponsored by Celebrating Kindness, created a “no name calling week”, to reduce kids in high school from using homophobic or gay slurs. This week has no set time, and schools and does it whenever they feel necessary. They propose ideas and things to do to keep kids from using these slurs, and how to celebrate LGBT+ students in their schools.

For my project, I had to do original research to find out more about my topic. I did a survey, which you can find here, and sent it out to children who go to my school.  My topics asked about how students felt about the LGBT+ community if they’ve heard slurs against it, if they’ve witnessed bullying, and if they’ve tried to help it. It was an anonymous survey, so no information was recorded about the students.

I learned from the students that most people thought the slurs were moderately hurtful, mostly heard them from students, and heard them in school. None responded that they disliked the LGBT+ community. This information helped me understand how a group of high school students feel about the LGBT+ community. It also helped me see that people sometimes don’t think that the slurs are hurtful, and some even said that they don’t hear the slurs at all. Personally, I think that the “hurt” of the slur depends on the person. It all depends on your experience with the LGBT+ community, your supports, and the type of people you’ve been around. I’m not affected much by homophobic slurs, but I do know people who are bothered by them a lot.

This image shows if people have seen bullying towards people in the LGBT+ community, taken from my survey results

For my agent of change in the real world, I’m not sure what I want to do yet. I was thinking of fundraising and giving the money to organizations who help prevent bullying or make safe spaces for teens who are LGBT+ and not supported. Or I wanted to fundraise and give the money to organizations that make “care packages” for Transgender teens who can’t afford, or whose parents won't let them buy clothes that make them feel comfortable. Those are some options that I have.

Hi, it’s Kai Payton again. In my first blog, I introduced my You & The World project which I’m doing on premature births. I gave basic information about premature births, such as about 380,000 babies are born prematurely a year in the U.S. A premature baby is a baby that was born 36 or fewer weeks from their initial due date and can cause many problems. Some of those problems were stated in my previous blog post so if you haven’t read it check it out. I also talked about why I chose to do premature births and it was because my aunt had a premature baby and it was a hard experience for her.

In this blog, I wanted to know more about the experience and how other families felt so I researched some stories from other mothers that had premature babies. The first story I found was from Catharine Aboulhouda’s family. Catharine was born weighing 1 pound and 11 ounces with a bleeding brain, a heart defect, and a heart murmur. She was due in October but was born in July. Catharine came home from the hospital after 113 days of being hospitalized there but she still needed monitors and oxygen. Now she’s a healthy little girl that is traveling around the country to share her story to help others understand how serious premature births are.

Another story I read about was from Tyler Jameson’s family. Tyler’s mom said she “developed preeclampsia with her first baby and was hospitalized on complete bedrest.” Tyler was born by emergency c-section at 26 weeks due to placental abruption. Placenta abruption is when the placenta detaches from the womb and it’s rare for it to happen. He was born with “respiratory distress syndrome, apnea, anemia, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, intraventricular hemorrhage, patent ductus, arteriosus, jaundice, and infections.” Some of the infections he was diagnosed with were sepsis, pneumonia, and bacterial meningitis. Due to his prematurity he had to get 2 surgeries when he was 6 months. Tyler has grown since then and shows no signs of disabilities that are common in premature babies.

I also did an interview with my aunt recently (The one who had Jase). She went deeper into her story about the experience of having Jase and the difficult times she had going through it. It was helped me think back to when Jase was going through his struggles. She explained that the experience when she first had Jase knowing that he was premature was like an “out-of-body experience,” and she didn’t realise how severe the experience was until later on. She also said that one of the things that got her through the experience was gospel music and praying. This adds to my understanding of Premature Births because I got  personal opinions from a mother that had a premature baby. It still amazes me how premature births can happen to any mother and if they want to do something about it it’s very expensive.

-Picture of The Interview With My Aunt and The Interview Questions

Overall with this blog post I wanted to get real stories from other families that experienced what my aunt experienced because some cases are more severe than others. I also wanted to share some of my personal connection to the topic to show why I care about it.

In my first Blog post, I did my best to inform you on what my topic was. I discussed the possible dangers in how technology has/will advance, the theories behind these dangers, and a proposal on how to delay/stop it. I looked at opinions from some of the world’s leading minds such as Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk. I looked into the way computers process information and how they could be integrated into technologies such as smart eye contacts. Since that post, I’ve sent out a survey with 41 responses (so far) and conducted an interview with SLA’s own Mr. Kamal. The interview was recorded on video and is planned to be integrated into a longer video in the future.

The Survey showed me a few things. While most people have computer technology heavily integrated into their lives, few of them feel an emotional connection to it. In my responses, I found a few incredibly in depth answers from people I could tell cared a lot about the subject.

Earlier in the year, I decided to take on the lead the Spirit Committee and I can tell you, I did not expect it to be this challenging. What I wanted out of this project was a growth from myself. I realized that I used to always stay in my comfort zone- which was allowing others to lead- and I never realized that it started to get boring. I was tired of the norm and I found that being that it is my last year at SLA, it would be the perfect timing to do so. I wanted to step up and see what I can do. I wanted to leave a mark that spoke about the person I am and that is a young woman who enjoys life. I believe that although school is important, so is a person's’ social skills. We all need to let loose and enjoy what is around us.

With that being said, throughout this school year I hosted the Halloween Costume Contest, Ugly Sweater Contest, fundraised for the school dance, hosted the SLA Dance, and lastly held a Pep Rally. The challenges I faced along the way was communication. Being that there are a handful of members on the committee, we had lots of ideas contributed. At one specific event, it was postponed twice. It was a stressful process and at times, I wanted to give up. But I had to think of the students and what worked best for all of us.

Improving The Care For The Youth

Hi, I’m Niya and for some time now, I have been doing some research on Problematic family. Basically I am going over the problems that happens in family homes such as abuse. It talks about how children are affected by the family homes and feelings they may come across while in a group or foster home. We aren’t really aware of what happens when no one is around. What if these problems are still going on in the oster or group home the child is staying in? Some people don’t really care or think about it as much as people like me. This can become a bigger problem and here is nothing changing to make sure children are safe and in a great group or foster home, To read more about go read my first post.

In my first post, I didn’t include something which would be very important to this project which is DHS. ( Department of Human Services) DHS is a child care system what protects children from bad parenting or abuse in homes. These people are big responders to any type of harm to children in their homes. Social worker play a big role in taking children from abusive homes and putting them into new group or foster homes. If you are interested in child welfare, there are people that will come to your home to see if everything is fine for a child to stay there with a gurdan.

Yes being in a group or foster home can be very stressful. So me children don’t believe that they should be there and they choose to run away from their foster or group home. In Oklahoma City, children were sexualy asstulted and after running away from state custody. You would think, why? Why would they run away just like that? This says that something is going on that others who care are not aware of.  Check out this situation about the abused runaway children.

I have recently interviewed a friend of mine named Orlando. Orlando is 15 year old  has been in 2 foster homes in his life for about 3 years. He says he has never liked foster homes . The first time he has ever stepped foot in a foster home was when he was only 6 years old and he says he didn’t feel comfortable and they didn’t not treat him like he was wanted there. He was also scared and had lots of problems that he can’t explain. While in foster homes, the only person he said he could count on was his sister who was also in a foster home but at the age of 17, it wasn’t required for her to stay there so she had left. Orlando says if he was one of the most important people working for the foster care system he said he would “Talk to kids privately and see if they are experiencing any problems in the group home. Mainly just talk to them and see how their foster parents and siblings are treating them.” You should see more of this interview with Orlando.

Also if you are looking for more information, I suggest you go check out my annotated Biography!

Hey everyone, I’m back again to tell you more about eating disorders. For an overview about what they are, see my last post. To recap, eating disorders are a medical issue when a person’s diet and relationship with food is severely damaged in some way. There are four categories of eating disorders: Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, Binge-Eating Disorder, or Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorders (OSFEDs). They can cause a person’s body to rapidly deteriorate to the point of death, if not treated.

Last post, I didn’t talk much about treatment for eating disorders, so that’s what I’m going to talk about now. According to Akron Children’s Hospital, treatment for eating disorders “focuses on helping kids cope with their disordered eating behaviors and establish new patterns of thinking about and approaching food.” This means that the affected person is being coached to think more positively about food and its purpose as nutrition, not to be abused or deprived of. There are different types of treatment: short-term inpatient, partial inpatient, intensive outpatient, and outpatient care. These can be combined or used one after the other, like a timeline. First is short-term inpatient, which is used when the patient is too physically or psychologically unstable to be home, and needs to receive medical help and/or therapy everyday. Then there’s partial inpatient care, where the patient needs to be at the hospital often, but isn’t a danger to themselves if at home. After that comes intensive outpatient, which means that the patient is home full-time, but receives medical and therapeutic help on a regular basis. Finally, there’s outpatient. This is when the patient has reached a much more stable relationship with food and life, is becoming much healthier, and is just in therapy, usually once or twice a week. Throughout the recovery process, it’s estimated that about 168 hours per month are invested in healing. However, sometimes treatment for these disorders are hard to get. In fact, less than half of people with eating disorders actually get the help that they need, with the statistics going as low as only 6% of patients getting treatment (this rate for bulimia, specifically). Part of this is due to people’s unawareness of what eating disorders are and how dangerous they can be. It’s also sometimes due to lack of health insurance to be able to pay to get checked into inpatient care, for the sometimes required medical tests and medicine, and therapy.

There also seems to be a stigma around eating disorders due to a lack of knowledge. I conducted my own survey, distributed to SLA students via the advisory memo and direct confrontation, and asked about how much the students know about eating disorders, how aware they are of their prevalence, how they learned about eating disorders, and how they see them in our community. The answers were downright dreary. Of the polled students, almost 70% have known someone with an eating disorder, and 22% have had one. That’s crazy, that eating disorders are so common, even in our own community. I also asked about what eating disorders people have heard of, the majority being Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa. This shows that awareness for eating disorders is low, to the point where only one or two disorders are widely known. Wake up, anorexia isn’t the only eating disorder! To see exactly how people think, I asked the recipients what comes to mind when someone says “eating disorders”. The most popular answers were: “Anorexia and Bulimia”, “skinny girls”, and “overeating”. This shows that people have a very one-dimensional view of eating disorders.

To see how students felt about eating disorders in our community, I asked about what they knew and felt. On a scale of 1-5 (1 being “I disagree completely” and 5 being “I agree completely”), students were asked to rate how much they agree with a statement. Most rated a “4”, for whether or not they feel eating disorders are a problem in our community. What’s outrageous is that not a single student said that they completely disagree that eating disorders aren’t a problem. That means that every student to take my survey thought that eating disorders are at least a little bit of a problem in the SLA community. Most people also rated a “2” on the statement “Students are well educated on eating disorders.” Therefore, the majority of students who took my survey think that we should learn more about eating disorders. I agree with this, because I have never, in any health or eating course, learned about eating disorders. I was never talked to about eating disorders, I learned about these disorders from a book and the internet, like a large number of my surveyors. Most of the people who took my survey also agreed that eating disorders aren’t talked about enough in our community, which I personally agree with.

As you can see, I and other members of the community feel that eating disorders are an under-communicated about problem. Eating disorders aren’t talked about much in our community, meaning that the only information people get about eating disorders, if any, is from their own research and the internet. Shouldn’t we be learning about this stuff in school, or from our parents? How can we know how bad these things are for us if we barely even know what they are. If someone finds out about bulimia, but doesn’t know all the consequences, they may think that it’s okay to get food out of your system in those ways. This needs to change. Therefore, I am going to raise awareness for my Agent of Change piece of this project. I intend to make one or two posters to hang up in our school, talking about eating disorders and their statistics, and to make a video. This video will talk about my own experience with eating disorders, as well as what they are and treatment for them. I will also include help resources for any struggling. I intend to show this video, perhaps at a grade-wide advisory if possible. Tune in next post to see how this all goes!