• I interviewed my grandmother on her experience with teen pregnancy because she had my mother at sixteen years old. Also, I'd like to thank my mother in advance for purchasing the shirts.
  
  The prototype of my shirt and the interview is below.

For the last phase of the You and the World project, there is the last blog post. Referred to as the Post for Change, the final blog post for everyone involves writing about how we all acted on the issues that we researched. Besides writing about the it, students would shoot surveys out to the rest of the school as part of the research, join groups who also wanted to make a change happen, and collect money to donate to their causes.

In the past and still today, commercials, numerous websites, and even television shows and movies are played to spread the news of the cases of domestic animal abuse locally and internationally. In addition to that, there are shelters and societies to join and/or volunteer at to make sure you put in your work towards helping the prevention of animal abuse, or helping an animal recover and feel loved again. I feel as though commercials and television shows are a good way to get out information to everyone about different forms of animal cruelty, because so many people in the world watch television and come across these ads. Lots of people know about those sad animal commercials, right?

For me, however, I like to create media that makes a change. For one, some graphic design for posters (even virtual posters) catch someone's eye, and they have the option to look at it, because it is not an advertisement that is blocking the person from watching the rest of their show. Pushing out emails about the change towards friends first and have it spread on its own is a way I like to make change happen. First, however, I did some personal service to help animals in recovery. A few years ago, I volunteered with a few people from my school with the Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) and helped get ready for opening by caring for cats, cleaning out their cages, sitting in rooms full of cats to play, and, at the end, donating. Sadly, after sending an email to see if that could happen again, I was informed that volunteers had to be 18, and that I should volunteer at the Philadelphia Zoo or at PSPCA, where younger people can help out. 

That is exactly what I will do to make my change. After donating to PAWS, my original organization of choice, I'm going to volunteer at the PSPCA. Having found out so late about the organization, I haven't gotten a chance to go to a volunteer's orientation (to go to after completing an application form). It might be too late to show you all how I worked for the better, but change is always good and better late than never. 

My original content for my last blog post is a virtual poster that I created as a bright advertisement against animal cruelty. Featuring a picture I took of my own cat at the top, underneath that, overlapping words written in different fonts and sizes like "alone" and "afraid," words used to describe a pet who is/was being abused and how much that takes from their being. At the bottom is a question in a bolder and bigger font that says: "When will all this change?" I want to put this poster on Tumblr, Facebook, the SLA website, of course, and maybe even get it printed to hang it around the school. The poster doesn't get people to go anywhere in specific, but gets people thinking about animal cruelty and how it's not good at all.

In closing, I'd like to acknowledge my english teacher, Alexa Dunn, for helping me to get involved with fighting animal cruelty with this project, to PAWS for referring me to volunteer at other places to make my change, and also you for reading and commenting on my blog posts. In a bigger perspective, what would you do to stop animal abuse if you saw it? Would you care? It won't stay like this forever. There will be a change.

Bibliography & more here!

Thanks for reading, again!

If you missed out on my last blog entry, I have been looking into the subject of domestic animal abuse within the world, and what I could do in order to help stop what is happening. Before, I packed in a lot of information about serious abusive situations and why I wanted to be a part of this kind of change. With this next entry, you'll find some more information, but more importantly, what I think of my topic at this point in my research.

I still have been keeping tolls on what has been going on with the health of domestic animals. While looking for some news to talk about, I found this article on the relations between domestic violence and animal cruelty from the ASPCA website. In that article is a list of stats comparing different concepts that have to do with domestic abuse and animal abuse happening under the same roof. For example, according to the article, studies have shown that those who abuse their pets do so in order to show control over the household and to intimidate the victims of domestic violence. The ASPCA has been finding ways to respond to those situations and help out as much as possible.

Going throughout this whole research project, I developed an even stronger opinion on animal abuse than I had before. For example, when I say "Animal abuse is wrong," I can back it up with more ways as to why it's wrong and examples of situations involving animal cruelty. Right now, I still want to find more reasons as to why pet owners find reasons to abuse their animals. Was it the way they were raised? Did their parents do the same thing? Is there a connection to emotional problems somewhere in there? Also, I am dying to know about what happens to animals used for testing in labs. More information is to come very soon! Thanks for reading!

What is Human Trafficking? It’s the form of slavery in which people control and exploit other human beings in order to create a profit.

Why is this a problem? Because until slavery and trafficking is fully abolished, the world is not a free one. Because no matter where the slavery is in the world, our freedom depends on the abolishment of it. Because, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, ‘no man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.’

Since my last post, I've taken some time to conduct some research outside of school. As it turns out, 1 out of every 5 people that I interviewed, between the ages of 14 and 18, didn't even know that Human Trafficking was a large world issue.  

Where is Human Trafficking occurring? Everywhere. Almost every single country on the planet is affected in some way by Human Trafficking. This map shows only a segment of the trafficking trade around the world:

The issue that I am looking at is an international issue. Although different countries have different cultural values of animals, I am more focused on worldwide domestic animal abuse. There are so many issues with every single house pet man could think of and how they are rejected and neglected by thousands. I find this topic very interesting because of how there are so many cases of abuse in not only America, but all across the globe. For example, adoption centers for cats and dogs are so full these days because they were saved from terrible experiences back at what they had to call home. This issue with the abuse of not only cats and dogs, but other pets too, keeps me passionate about it because the abuse is completely senseless.  Every ten seconds, an animal is abused. They are helpless under their owners, whom are supposed to treat their pets as an addition to their families, as a newborn baby. Animals do not know right from wrong unless taught, and hurting them and treating them unfairly is never the right way to teach right from wrong. 

So far in this project, I've found out loads. For example, stats from the Aspca website reports that although many pets are owned, there is a huge amount of those in shelters, specifically dogs and cats. There are literally thousands of community animal shelters in the US alone, and over five million domestic animals come into shelters yearly. These animals are either given up by their previous owners, or captured by animal control. The saddest part of this story is that over half of the millions of animals moved to animal shelters are euthanized while there. For those who do not know, euthanasia is the "intentional ending of a life in order to relieve pain and suffering" (from Wikipedia). This means that dogs, cats, and other pets are "put to [eternal] sleep" when it seems like nothing else but death would be good for them. There are countless amounts of stray animals in the US, especially the almost one hundred million in America alone, buy why? Because they were put out of the house by their careless owners? Did they run out, and their owners were not responsible enough to get them to come back? Or did owners move from one house to another and left behind a "small" thing that they would not need? All of these could be factors. But all of these should not happen for pets that do not know how to cope with these situations. That's why they need owners.

When pets are abused, they could be for money, for fighting, for behavior, anything, really. Some pets are even abused out of pure love. What I mean by that is that there are animal hoarders that keep hundreds of pets cramped up in one house. These animals are usually cats. They go from two cats to ten and then fifty before a month is finished. Owners care too much and love all their animals. But this just might be a form of too much love. Yes, the cats are found on the streets and multiply in the house they live in, but conditions become so hostile that the cats usually become sick and sometimes die. With dogs, the same can happen. But, a more reoccurring problem with the abuse of dogs is the advancement of puppy mills. In those, puppies, instead of having a "childhood," are bred before mature, so that they could go to pet stores. The offspring of these puppies usually have medical problems. In puppy mills, dogs are bred at a young age, raised in harsh conditions and in cages, and are bred with siblings often. That is why all pet owners should, instead of buying pets from stores like Monster Pets or off the Internet, get them from actual local breeders in the area.

Finally, the most current story I found in animal abuse is that the al-Quaeda terrorist group has developed more plans to plant bombs in US airlines. One by the name of Ibrahim al-Asiri has found multiple ways to pass bomb holders through metal detectors at airports, including surgically implanting bombs in helpless pets. Not only is the pet victimized, but the hundreds of people on a flight will die from a stunt such as this! No animal deserves to die in that way. From here, I want to know what triggers owners specifically to abuse their pets, what type of abuse happens to animals in labs instead of homes, and how people can prevent this from happening besides donating.

Thanks for reading, click here for further links and a bibliography.

In the last Quarter of school, our English teacher Ms.Dunn gave us a project called “You and the World”. In this project the issue I am going to bring up is school bullying. I think bullying is the big issue going on all over U.S. I am interested in this issue because I have been bullied in middle school, because I spoke different languages when other kids in my class did not. I moved here from Bangladesh when I was twelve years old. When I started school, I didn’t know much English and was shy to talk. Kids would push me, try to fight me and make fun of me because I was different.

I think bullying is the perfect reason why kids in middle school don’t like to be in school. Watch this video. It shows how unsafe some of our schools are in Philadelphia. After years of harassment and bullying, this video was taken by a 12 year old girl who wanted her mother to see what going on in her classroom everyday.

According to the New York Times, in Philadelphia seven teenagers were arrested for a bullying incident in which a 13-year-old student was kicked and beaten before being hung by his coat from a spiked fence post. This is what is happening in our School District schools and I don’t think those kids are safe in school. We as community members have to do something about this bullying and stop it as soon as possible.

To see my bibliography, click here. 

Women and girls take up most of the trafficking victims, but that’s not to say that trafficking is not a real threat for everyone. In fact, there are more slaves today, an estimate of about 3 billion, than in any other time in history. While some people would immediately say that they couldn’t see any reason that this would ever happen, the trafficking industry takes in about $32 billion dollars of yearly profit. In fact, money is primarily the reason for trafficking. Poor families often sell of their young girls to rich family members or brothels in order to make some money. 

Human Trafficking is a real issue for everyone in the world- nearly every country is involved as either a country of origin or destination. Not only that, but also only one person gets convicted for every 800 people trafficked.

So why did I immediately think of human trafficking? Well, many reasons. I’ve already been involved in campaigns to end this horrific occurrence. One of the organizations that I’ve researched, and donated to, is the Not For Sale campaign, which essentially raises awareness and money to save victims of trafficking around the world. However, more recently, my good friends uncle created a movie called “Horse & Rider.” The film was created in partnership with Freedom Firm, which is another organization dedicated to rescuing victims of human trafficking, specifically those of sex trafficked victims in India. The film follows the stories of two girls who were rescued from the trade, and are now in a rehabilitation center. I was asked to sing on the soundtrack for the movie, along with a few other girls, and it was a great experience to get connected and proactive in the fight for the end of human trafficking. I realized that human trafficking is a huge issue across the globe, and no one is safe from it.  

So now we know what human trafficking is, and how big of an issue it is. But how can we help? What can we, as citizens, do? I think it’s also important to think about what has been done already, how far has that gotten us? How much improvement has this cause seen, and how much can it expect to see within the next few years?