Hey everyone, it’s Devia again! If you’ve been keeping up with my blog posts on youth violence, you should know that I’ve been researching on youth violence. For my first blog, I mostly wrote about what my topic was and why it was important to me. Also, it spoke of what caused the majority of youth violence and teenagers’ participation in violent behavior. For my first blog post, click here. My second blog contained information on my piece of original research. For that, I conducted a survey marketed towards teenagers in questions that could help the reader and myself better understand what goes through the average youth’s mind. To access my second blog post, you can click this link.

This blog is the final piece of my English class’ “You and The World” project. To conclude the segment, we had one last mission; become an Agent of Change. To become this ”Agent of Change” it was our sole duty to not only research and write about our important topic, but to help to better our issue. This is just us getting involved in our topic, trying to be of service in any way we can, any way that we can think of. For my Agent of Change part of the project, I chose to spread the word. Even though this blog is helping get the word about youth violence, it still isn’t enough. I needed to do something else, something greater than just this blog to spread the word. Around my neighborhood, I’ve been posting up papers and posters that support anti violence in youth. I’ve also spoke with my peers at my church on this topic.

I know it isn’t much, but it’s more than what somebody else didn’t do. By putting up posters and flyers, the word to help subdue youth violence will disseminate. First, through my neighborhood, then the city and from there, there’s no telling what could happen afterwards. There’s no telling how far my anti violence campaign will go. With that, the additional piece of my Agent of Change work was with my church group, where I briefly spoke on my You and The World project and youth violence itself. I hope that it was good enough to subordinate anyone that I spoke to to partake in youth aggression. Furthermore, I hope that the people I spoke with can follow in my footsteps to help spread an anti violence campaign in youth. I’m fraught with satisfaction based on what I’ve been doing. I feel as though everything that I do is serving a helping hand in detaching violence and aggression from teenagers.    

Other things are also being done to discontinue teenage violence as well. Various organizations and clubs have programs that help prevent youth violence as well. For example, the city of Philadelphia has conducted a project, located as a pdf here, designed to become a bulwark, stopping violent behavior from reaching youth beforehand. The plan is a multiple step project whose focal points are broken down into the categories of Education, Training and Employment, Meaningful Engagement, Health, Detention and Diversion and a Safe Environment. The city’s main idea is that by doing things to prepare them for the future, distract them from violence, and help promote safety, youth would more likely be prone to a nonviolent behavior. Furthermore, there are an array of clubs and programs that teens can join that influence a stray from violent behavior. One of those organizations being PAAN, the Philadelphia Anti-Drug/Anti-Violence Network, which strives to help reduce the violence in youth.

Even though I did a lot of work, I still wish that some things were to be done differently. If I could change anything about my project, I would change how much I worked as an Agent of Change. I think that I could have done more to promote my issue to others. I could have scheduled more opportunities to speak about my topic to others and maybe helped out in an organization as a volunteer. Everything is okay though because I still think that no matter how much I didn’t do, I did enough.

Lastly, I would like to thank everyone who helped me while I was trying to do this project. I would like to thank my teacher, Mrs. Dunn, and my student teacher, Ms. Lucy, for assisting me and answering any questions I had about the project. I would also like to thank my old teacher, Mr. Crain for helping me to get more people interested in my issue. I would also like to thank everyone who’ve read my blogs and been keeping track of my issue.

Thank you!

Hello, My name is Niah Lombo and I am a ninth grader at Science Leadership Academy. I am doing a project for my English class about an issue that concerns me, and I have to write three blogs about it, I am back for my third and final blog post.  For my YATW (You And The World) project I choose to raise awareness for the shortage of donors for Hispanic, African american, and mixed people.  If you would like to read more about my issue in my past blog posts please click here for blog post 1 and click here for blog post 2. After learning more about my issue it was time for me to take action and get my hands dirty (literally) and step up to help my cause.

I knew that for my agent of change I wanted to do more than just bring in stuff because people will most likely forget. That was too much of a hassle to do, I wanted to do something that will get a lot of teenagers excited and for them to learn something. Then I had an idea! What better way to draw in a crowd then Food! So on May 15, 2014 I sold food at lunch to raise money and donate it a charity that helps support my cause. My main goal was to draw people in with the food so I could inform them about my cause and collect money for the donation. My lunch periods are longer than usual schools lunch periods are (1 hour and 5 minutes) so that gave me a lot of time to get to talk to everyone about my cause and how I am trying to take action. What shocked me the most is that 95% of the people that had asked what I was selling food for (Hispanic rice, baked chicken, and salad) was not aware of the shortage of donors for Hispanics, African Americans. After I told them what I was doing they wanted to learn more about what I was doing, so I showed them to my blog post 1 and 2.

I felt good to know that I was already making a change and that was getting the people aware of what is happening that you wouldn't see on the news or in the newspaper. I wish I could have done more for my agent of change , but I did raise a lot of money for the foundation I am planing on doing it again.  My hopes were to raise money and inform/aware people of the shortage of donors for African Americans, Hispanics, and mixed people; and I am glad to say that I did exactly that. I had raised $76 and I plan on holding on to that Intel I do my second agent of change and donate everything all together.

There are a few things I wish I could have done better. I wish I would have started my agent of change earlier so I could have done more. I also wish I would have done a little gathering that would inform/aware more people on what my issue is. Now all I need to do is give donate the money and I will have completed my YATW project (not exactly). Even though school is almost over and I will be going into the next grade this issue is important to me and my family and I plan on continuing my effort to aware people. Overall, I am so glad that this project was given to my class and if I got the chance to do it again I would. It was a fantastic experience and I felt like I learned more about me and others doing this project. Thank you for reading and I hope you all learned something even if it was from my blog or my classmates blog.

Hi! My name is Katarina Backo and I am a ninth grader at Science Leadership Academy. I am doing a project for my English class about an issue that concerns
me, and I have to write three blogs about it. Here is the link to my first blog, second  blog link and this is my third blog in this series. My issue involves play time, and how technology impacts children’s activity and therefore their lives. I am an artistic, athletic person connected with my family and happy about it. I wish that everybody could have the happiness I have, but I think that wrong use of technology prevents that. Hope you’ll enjoy reading my ideas.

In my Blog #1 my focus was on balance (“I love technology as well, but I think that everything should be balanced.”-Blog #1). My concern was that nowaday teens will choose to play with technology rather than going outside to play.

In my previous blog my focus was on how “ I went to all my activities and still didn’t notice new teens making use of abundant free teen programs that exist in Philadelphia. Besides working on this project I  had the opportunity and luck to do a research on how technology affects people for my technology class. For my Science Fair Project I have decided to dig deeper into how teens tell time and that helped me understand how I could resolve my issue.”(-Blog #2)

For the past few weeks, I was aware of how friends around as well as myself, were totally out of order and organization for our school work. It’s not that we can’t do other things, its just that when we are playing a game, listening to music, on facebook, on twitter, we lose the sense of time and end up not being able to finish things. If people heard about and tried the programs Philadelphia offers, then there would be enough human interaction. They would be able to experience what people used to do for fun, before electronics were there. If we do that it will help us not depend on technology so much.

As an agent of change I would like to show what is happening in Philadelphia and I hope that my peers will join me in my endeavours. As I was talking about in the last 2 blogs, I have a lot of activities and I want to share my experiences in order to increase the visibility of programs for teens.   

I was happy to volunteer at my old Mural Arts Program location (Southwark), where anime photoshoot took place. For the past couple of weeks teen artists have been working on creating costumes of anime characters they created to present some of the world problems. For example one of the issues mentioned was littering, and I helped the issue come alive by being involved in finalizing this costume:

Litter anime character

The students first decided which issue they wanted to take. Next, they designed their costumes, which later they made themselves, with the help of teachers from Mural Arts, and volunteers like me. Mural Arts Program also provided all the materials teen artists needed.

The day of the shoot there was one photographer, professional makeup artists and volunteers. Even though there were professionals at the scene, teen artists took pictures, and everyone was involved in creating the wonderful environment. It was a really fun experience and I hope you will enjoy the pictures!!!!

The photo shoot

Makeup for all the models (even the guys)

Preparations

Later those photos were displayed in a gallery with other art projects of the other locations of Mural Arts. From the experience teen artists had, I think they learned a lot about design, making and modeling. Events and projects are happening at Mural Arts all the time, throughout the city of Philadelphia. Murals, sculptures, drawings, photos, are not the only things students in the Mural Arts Program make, there is also memories, friendships and important life lessons.

I volunteered at the Christian Street  YMCA. My YMCA has a lot of holiday parties with lots of activities and food for different holidays.The YMCA provides lots of sports, activities and workouts, but my favorite part is the pool. I am the part of the swimming team and our team has a lot of swim meets, which are competitions against other teams from other YMCAs. When I did not swim on those I helped on the deck. Also I helped with swim lessons for little kids.

25 yard pool at the Christian street YMCA

At the Whitman branch of the Free Library of  Philadelphia, where I always volunteer, there are a lot of different sections, and teen section one of them. There is a lot of clubs in the library, scrabble club, chess club, games club, and they have a relaxing yoga class. I volunteered at the Science in the summer program and it is a 2 day course with different labs. They also needed volunteers for Summer Reading Program, to help them inform and deal out prizes. This time I volunteered at the activity for little kids called “Story time”, where kids listened to stories, made bracelets, mixed colors, and made collages.  

The teen section at the Whitman branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia

I asked the librarian to give me a few words about things they offer for teens in the library:

Throughout this project my opinion changed, evolved, and grew. It helped me see things around me clearer and with more understanding. Maybe, I could have made posters, flyers, and other advertisements, to represent the programs, to show people that they can do something interesting in their spare time. However, I think that this way everyone can get first hand personal experience from me.

The way I was an agent of change was not just volunteering. I also took my friends to those places and after they experience the atmosphere, activities and fun they stayed and started to go there more often. There is only one thing left to say and that is: Instead of staying inside, go out and enjoy the world around you!!!!

Hi it’s Kai again! I’m back and writing my third and final blogpost on the overlooked and forgotten people of Philadelphia. If you remember my previous posts “Do You Care” and “The Overlooked of Philadelphia” you’ll know that my focus are the citizens of Philadelphia who have been overlooked by our government.This topic is important to me because it affected me and so many others. I have talked about the Germantown Avenue Crisis Ministry and the Abbotsford Falls Family Crisis and Counseling Clinic being a place where a number of our community members are forgotten. When I talk about being forgotten I mean the many citizens of Philly who are not being taken care of and not given the respect they deserve. The more we come together as a people to try and fix our failed system the stronger it’ll make us.

I knew that for my agent of change I wanted to do more than just bring in cans or gently used clothes. Constantly reminding my class mates to bring in supplies wasn’t what I had in mind for my project. In my previous blogs talked about the Germantown Avenue Crisis Ministry and the Abbotsford Falls Family Practice and Counseling clinic being a place where many have been forgotten. That was only an example. Philadelphia is a big city and the more people I made aware the better. For my agent of change I wanted to make sure everybody knew about the problem we are facing as a community. Our city is suffering at the hands of our leaders and nobody has been stepping up to fix it. Our school system is failing, there are a limited amount of health professionals who take patients without insurance, every other day a kid dies at the hands of a gun, and the amount of homeless people is outrageous. So after going through all my options I decided on an interactive presentation during advisory. My presentation focused on the failing school system because that would connect with students more than anything else.

In my presentation I showed six different school logos. Three of which are neighborhood school and the other three are magnet schools. I asked my advisory what the difference was between the schools. As my advisory was talking they really came to realize that there was a problem. The fact that there is such a big gap between the difference in test scores from a school like South Philly High and SLA or Promise Academy at King and Central. After I talked about the different schools I wanted to ask if there were any schools you got rejected by that you were considering for high school. Like myself many students were considering three or four schools but only got into one or two. All of us were lucky to get into SLA but tens of thousands of other students end up having to go to their neighborhood schools which aren’t academically challenging. When you teach students to compete for schools and some kids end up in sub par schools you also teach them not to care. They think: well I’m not good enough to get into this school so I’m must not be smart. That is the wrong message to send to the kids who will run this country.

My topic isn’t something that you can fix overnight, when you’re talking about whole cities there is little that you can do to make a huge impact. So I concluded that the best way to change any problem is through education; after all you can’t fix something that you don’t know about. While most Philadelphia students know about the budget crisis and our failing school system not many know the details, like what is happening? who is doing it? and what can we do to fix it? I hit all these points and more in my presentation in a way that engaged my peers. By the time I finished my project I really felt as though I had gotten my point across and I was really being heard. The advisory was asking questions about what they could do to help and they were thinking about alternative options to fix what our government had broken.

The biggest lesson that I learned wasn’t through my research as much as it was through my class. It felt really rewarding to know that I wasn’t in this boat alone, that there are other people who want to take action in my cause. I am confident that my peers are not only aware of the issue but willing to help by writing and letters and trying to get our voices heard. I plan on continuing my agent of change even after this project by getting a group letter sent to Governor Corbett. This project has allowed me take on a topic that is really important to me and for that I’m grateful. I had always known that the forgotten of Philly was a problem but I never knew how to fix it. Through this blog I figured out how.

Hello, welcome back to blog post 3! I am Haisha Hahsy and in our literacy class with our teacher Mrs. Dunn has given us all a project called “You And The World.” My first blog (Dec. 17,2013) and second blog(March 1, 2014 ) post started with introducing people to my cause, The Poor In Afghanistan and I showed real life examples and gave ideas on how to help this meaningful cause. Now it’s been quite a while from blogging. Now that we have the research, what are the changes that I/we have made?

On April 24, 2014 was when I had a bake sale at SLA when over 40 people came onto us. On May 2, 2014 I also held a movie night with 5 star dinner.  Our movie was “Alladin” I advertised it at SLA and about 9-13 people came. I personally told 30 people about my cause. This is a change, that more people know, more than 70 people now know only by talking about this cause. I even gathered some donation money to send towards Bayat foundation.

The way I chose to bring change was a fun way. The bake sale was full of sweets and goodies and the movie night was “magical” (thanks to the genie). When I told people about my cause most people did have an idea as I had suspected, but the thing is that; no one knew how important they were in this cause! Everyone thought that they had to donate money but no that is only one way to help, getting the word around helps just as much. The more people that know about the cause the better! I also learned some things about myself like how much one has to try in order to do somethings like advertising and getting the movie night set up, hate to say but it wasn’t the most fun thing I had done. There were lots of ups and downs but, in the end it all paid off because I know I tried and that’s what really matters.

I also feel like I could have done better if I made some more time for myself to get everything done. I also wish that more people would have come because I mean I was really looking forward to my movie night but then some people didn’t show and etc. But more time would have done better, other than that I think I did a pretty good job especially with trying to get everything in order (really hate to toot my own horn). I am also planning to hold another bake sale soon and combine the money to get a larger amount of donation money to send!

I must say trying is the key! Even if you tell your friends about the poor in Afghanistan that immediately throws you into bring change. Even if all you do is a little research or even just read this you are bring change. Like I have said before and I will say again the more people that know about this cause brings more change. If I only can bring this much change, just think if we all did. I think it makes a huge change, don’t you think? If you agree with me, then come on ahead and start bringing change. At the moment you are the key to our success.

bake sale picture, one yummy treat!

and movie night!

Hello fellow readers and welcome to my last and final blog. As you know from my last two blogs, my topic is on the issue of Animal Cruelty in America. If you’re a new reader, please read by first and second blog to know about previous information.

In my previous blog, I interviewed staff members at the Francisvale Home for Small Animals and asked the question, “ How can I prevent animal cruelty?” The staff said that I could teach others own on to treat animals with respect and volunteer at animal shelters. After reading that answer, a lot of possibilities rolled into my mind on how I could give back to solving this problem to serve as my Agent of Change part of my You and the World project. I’ve have heard of fundraisers to raise money, but I find it hard to believe that people can donate to a charity or fund, but not know any knowledge on the topic. I wanted to create a fun and profitable way to raise money to donate to shelters who have financial problems. I decided to not only have a bake sale to raise money, but to have some type of information on animal abuse to be given to the buyer, so they walk knowing exactly what the problem is.

My partner, Kara, and I bought donuts and cheesecake to sell to students at our school, Science Leadership Academy, but not only did we just sell it to them, we told them facts about animal cruelty like the fact that last year there were almost 20,000 cases of reported animal abuse  and that some ways animals are abused could be by hanging or burning. Several students were surprised by the ways that the reported abused animals were treated and even more surprised by how many cases there were. Many asked me about ways they could help with fighting against this problem. With the advice from Francisvale, we told students that they could help by volunteering at a local shelter and educating others by telling them the correct ways of handling an animal with respect and dignity. We afterwards donated all the money to PAWS, an animal shelter that is in danger of staying open, since it runs out of money and supplies from time to time.

The fundraiser was a success! We wanted to raise at least 50 dollars and we came close with 38 dollars. We both agreed that if we had brought in more food, then we would have exceeded our total amount earned. It felt great to raise this money,as it was my first time conducting a fundraiser, and the fact that it was for such a great cause as well. I can’t help but get excited when I think about all the animals that we’ve helped out. I learned that there are people who genuinely care about animal abuse and cruelty. It was actually surprising to see students who were  interested in learning more and it made me feel proud that I was able to accomplish my goal on educating others on the evils of animal abuse.

Us giving the PAWS staff the money. Look at the kitten!

Me selling our last donut

Although I am happy with the amount of money Kara and I made, I still do wish that we could have raised more. Next time, I believe that I should bring in more baked goods to sell, that way we earn more of a profit. Although shelters do appreciate the money, they also look for supplies, as it can run out very quickly and the animals are most dependent on it.  I wanted to have a towel drive at school, but there wasn’t a sufficient amount of time that I had on my hands, and I was afraid that the expectation of towels that I wanted wouldn’t be met. want to hold more bake sales and fundraisers. Right now, I feel that all that is left is to just educate more. This time, I educated people at my school, but next time around, I want to educate people throughout Philadelphia.

I enjoyed this project with all my heart. I picked a topic that I felt strong about, and in return, I received an amazing experience with fighting for a change. I hope at one point, animal abuse and cruelty won’t be as much of a problem it is today and I’ll continue to make a change. I’d like to thank Kara for joining me in fundraising for the help of animals who were victims of abuse. Without her, the outcome wouldn’t have been as grand as it was. I’d also like to thank Ms.Dunn, my English teacher, for always being there and for guiding me through this project. Last, I’d like to thank all my readers who followed me throughout this journey of my blogs. It was nice to receive feedback, and it made me feel 100 percent better about the change that I was making. Thank you.

Go and visit Kara’s blogs!

Hey everyone, as you may or may not know my name is Adlynn Gonzalez and this is the ending to my You And The World project. You And The World is a way for you to get involved with a topic you really like and write three blogs about your issue. My issue is reading in Philadelphia and motivating children to read more. My blogs 1 & 2 go into more detail with my topic and if you haven’t read them yet, please do!

While doing more research on my topic, I found that there are companies that are trying to encourage kids to read. At my elementary school, Pizza Hut would have a challenge for students to read as much as they can, document how many hours that they read and at the end of the friendly competition the class with the most reading hours would get a pizza party. Another program I found is called “Book Adventure” and its a fun way for kids to find books, read them, takes quizzes, and earn prizes. I think that these programs are great ways to encourage reading. I like how they motivate kids to appreciate reading more than some already do.

For my Agent of Change ( something to bring awareness to your topic ) I created a book drive. My book drive lasted 3 weeks and I collected more than 40 books to donate to a library that doesn’t have a lot to offer. I was actually surprised by how many people that donated; I wasn’t expecting a lot of people to donate so it was a nice surprise.

Throughout this project I felt kind of important. I felt like even though I am a teen I could make a difference in this world. I learned that other people actually care about this topic as well, and were actually really interested in what I was doing. Hopefully I could do this again next year. Maybe I could host a yearly book drive at my school and have a fundraiser of some sort with it .

There are a few things I wish I could have done better. I wish I would have started my book drive earlier so I could have gotten more donations. I also wish I had a fundraiser to raise money for organizations that promote reading, but things didn’t go as planned. Now all I need to do is give the books to the library and I will have completed my YATW project. Overall, I am so glad that this project was given to my class and if I got the chance to do it again I would. It was a fantastic experience that allowed me to two of my favorite things: promote reading and write. Thank you for reading this blog and I hope I get to do a project like this again!

Book It

Be A Phanatic About Reading

Hello again, my name is Tomas Arango, a 9th grader at Science Leadership Academy, and I’m back for my final and last blog post for my You and The World issue, U.S Media Bias. It’s a topic that really matters to me out to me because when I read or watch the news  I always notice media bias and it can bother me sometimes. In my first blog post I introduced my issue and why it mattered to me, and gave several examples of media bias. In my second blog post I focused on my original research which was a survey I created and posted on social media websites for my friends and family to take part of. In this final blog post I will be focusing on my action of change.

For this last section of the project we were supposed to go out into the world and make a change and inform people about our issue. I decided to create a presentation for my advisory and inform them about U.S Media Bias, while also seeing what they already knew.  I wanted to make a presentation that wasn’t just me talking, I wanted my classmates to be able to interact. So I started of by asking my advisory what they thought media bias then providing them with an accurate description of what it really is.

My classmates were interested in my presentation and engaged in mini discussions when I asked them questions, like what examples of media bias have they noticed, and what news organizations did they see it the most from. We discussed the issues of media bias and their opinions on why it’s bad.Many of the students answered with similar saying that the news makes other countries look bad and make stereotypes about religion especially Islam. I also showed video examples such as a Stephen Colbert episode when he talks about the Norway shooting incident and how media immediately jumped to conclusions and blamed it on Islam and Al-Qaeda. Video Link here. But I also included a video related to the presidential campaign with Obama and Romney where the news source took sides with one the candidates and made the other look bad. I was surprised on how aware some of my classmates were of the issue, but I was also glad that I got to show and inform my peers about the issue.

          Showing the definition of media bias

Asking questions and interacting with students

           Showing video examples of media bias

Student taking part in discussion

Media Bias still occurs about every week. Media sources false report events or decide to focus on celebrities and their private life instead of the more important issues going on in the world. For example the other I was watching the news and the headline was Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, and I thought that was pretty absurd. Focusing on the life of a celebrity rather than the issues of the world is pretty dumb. The news also makes  other countries look bad because of their pasts. All of this creates issues, it can change peoples views on certain places and religions just because of a single news report. It also makes our country look like ignorant and single sided when it comes to our views of other places. It’s as if we think we are so much better than all the other countries.  I wanted my Agent of Change to inform people of the traps of media and to watch out that they fall for them.

This project has been a wonderful experience. I never thought I would do a project like this and I really liked the whole idea of it. The process of it was great because I got write a topic I was passionate about and enjoyed. I got to research information about my topic and learn great new things about my topic. At first I was a bit nervous because it took me a while to come up with a topic but once I found one everything went smoothly. One thing I wish I could of done better was have more time for my advisory presentation because I had to share a class period with another student. I think if I would of had a whole advisory period I would have been able to have more interactive time with my peers. I want to thank Ms. Dunn for the awesome project idea, Ms. Lucy, and everyone who helped out with filling out my survey, and took part in my advisory presentation.