Hey, my name is Fodie Camara. My topic is hunger. I choose this topic of hunger because I want to know all about hunger and how it affects people  in differents ways. When I learn it, I want to tell people and try to stop hunger. I will spread the information around to teach people about hunger and many different.

We have many different groups in Philadelphia to stop hunger or support food to programs. We have Stop Hunger Now, Coalition against Hunger,  Philabundance. They all have one motto, is to stop hunger and feed people who don’t have enough meals in Philadelphia. They try their best to help people without food or in some type in trouble.

Stop Hunger Now works with  international partners that ship and gives meals in country.

Volunteers come and package the meals. They serves 70% of its meals to provide programs such as school feeding programs, vocational training programs, early childhood development programs, orphanages, and medical clinics. Stop Hunger Now is an international hunger program that has been promised to stop hunger for more than 15 years. They working with school and after school programs will try to stop poverty.

Philabundance was created in 1984. Philabundance works with families hit hard by the recession. They work with seniors trying to make ends meet. They are the largest hunger group. They are now able to address hunger through direct service such as food cupboards, emergency kitchens, shelters, and many more. Philabundance has take hunger really serious in Delaware Valley. They use Food donations, and the community. Philabundance helps 72,000 people per week.

Makhi Richburg

Music

In middle school, I took part in an extracurricular program called Play On Philly, or POP. POP started in 2011. It was a music program that was fairly socially intuitive. In fact, I made many friends from different grades there and between my colleagues and I, there was a family bond between us. Students that were in POP had to go 5 times a week for at least 2 hours during the weekdays. The teachers’ teaching skills were phenomenal. They would play the song so that you get the idea of how it sounds, then they’d start the students out slow and have them play parts of the piece separately  

Being there was always the highlight of my day because I enjoyed learning about music let alone playing an instrument. The instrument that I played was the viola, like the violin but bigger and one different string. The best parts of being apart of the program were the places we’ve traveled for our concerts. We’ve been to many places: Mann Center, nursing homes, New Jersey, Kimmel Center, Baltimore, etc. We’ve even played with Sir Simon Rattle, a world famous conductor.

To show my gratitude for all the great times I’ve had and for the knowledge I’ve gained at POP, I’m going to assist the younger kids with their musical studies. The younger kids are the future of POP and if they get a boost of knowledge from an excellent young musician like myself, the outcome can be extraordinary.

Music is important because it is beneficial to the mind. Playing an instrument increases one’s intelligence, problem solving skills, enhances their hand-eye coordination, increases memory capacity, improves discipline, builds self-esteem, etc. In general, music is therapeutic. It can change your mood and can even change your entire worldview. There’s been plenty of tests and comparisons between a musician and non-musicians and they all end up with the musician having a brain that’s smarter and more active. It’s evident that music is highly influential!

Being a musician has multiple benefits and I recommend all non-musicians to play an instrument. If music generally can make anyone smarter, imagine the minds of people who have been surrounded by music since the beginning of their lives. I want to give the children in POP a jumpstart to benefit their futures. Not only will they be incredibly intelligent people, but they are likely to be living happy and calm lives because of how therapeutic music is.

Annotated Bibliography

When people are angry do they take anger out on animals?

     People with problems tend to abuse animals and neglect them of basic necessities like food, shelter, and water. I believe when people are angry they take their anger out on animals. They do this because the animal is either the closer target or they find joy in abusing animals. So some things that I have found in the website (you can click here), is that facts show that 13% of animal abuse come from a domestic home.  As I researched I have found something on how abuse can affect a child, so when a child is young they learn about abuse by being a victim of it or have witnessed it. So as the child gets older and as he/she gets a certain development with anger issues they would tend to build up anger, and then the child would take their anger out on animals. If the child has not began to seek help by the time as an adult they would go after other things such as peers, children, adults, even the elderly. To them these people would be considered a vulnerable opportunity. Also, family members being held against for child abuse also had abused animals. In in more than half of these cases, an abusive parent had killed or injured a pet a child victim continued the cycle of violence by abusing a pet.

          In one study that i have found on this website is that, 70% of animal abusers also had records for other crimes. Domestic violence victims whose animals were abused saw the animal cruelty as one more violent episode in a long history of indiscriminate violence aimed at them and their vulnerability.Another study that I have found is that, a lot of pet owning women entering women’s help treatment centers reported that they have  injured, harmed, killed or even threatened family pets for revenge or to  control victims and that 32% reported their children had brutally injured a pet or killed a pet. As I have found in my studies about my topic and things that I have heard from the world is that pets may suffer unexplained injuries, health problems, permanent disabilities at the hands of abusers, or disappear from home.

This is a picture of a pit-bull named Remy. This dog was found in June 2013 she was a victim of animal cruelty and abuse. When the ASPCA found her she had two broken legs, skin disease,  and severe muscle atrophy, she also was so weak and frail that that she could not stand or walk. This was caused because she was a victim of animal abuse. To me this is what happens when people are selfish and does not care about the needs of an animal. Although animals are not humans does not mean that we can look at them as a piece of trash, they are still living beings, and we can still treat them with respect as we would want someone to give us.

      This is a picture of a cat named Kylie she was a victim of chemical burns. She was found late last year when a dog owner found her. Kylie was in a lot of pain and it took several surgeries so that Kylie could be healed. Everyone at the hospital fell in love with her as she began to recover. So like I said I do not understand how can people do this to defenseless creatures, Kylie was affected by chemical burns that caused her to lose lots of skin, Kylie is a survivor.  

    This is a dog rescued from a puppy mill, I am not sure what this puppy’s name is but it was found on a facility with a lot of other animals. These animals were rescued in 2011 and people were complaining about these animals. These were animals with problems like mold and matted fur, suffering from infection, dental disease and various other ailments. This is a link to this page if you would like to get more information on that topic.

      One reason that I became interested in this topic is because growing up I hated to see the commercials with animals on them that makes them look really said, and it gets a little emotional. So, doing this is a way to help relieve my sympathy and to get the word out to others. I am hoping that this will encourage people to help abandoned animals in need and if this comes across someone with one of these problems to get treatment or counseling.  

      This concludes my blog on animal abuse if you have any comments, please leave them below and if you would like me to answer leave them below as well thank you for reading my blog. For further information visit my bibliography.

Blog Post #1

My name is Brandon Jones and I am a freshman at Science Leadership Academy. In my English class we were given an assignment to tackle an issue we found and blog about it. The issue I picked was the  test scores of children from different ethnicities and how the scores of African American children were alarmingly low.

For my blog post I researched and found many interesting and informative articles. This particular article reported that African American children scored lower than European Americans in Vocabulary, Reading and Mathematics test. This true, but aggravating statement made me realize how serious this issue is. It is disheartening to read that the gap between the two ethnicities starts before children enter kindergarten and sadly leads into adulthood. The article states that even though this problem cut down since 1970, the average African American child still scores 75% below the average Caucasian child and on some tests, African American children score 85% below Caucasian children.

*above are the percentages of white, black and hispanic students who scored at or above proficient on standardized test*

The article here and the graph above, concerns me and makes me wonder what could be done about this issue. To solve an issue, you must first address the problem, however for his particular issue, there are many possible problems. One being improper funding for students. In Lower Merion, the School District spends $21,399 per student and the School District of Philadelphia only provides $11,078 per student. Another problem is racism and making children feel lesser than what they can be.

As for the solutions, I could go on for days about the possible theories and solutions on solve the issue at hand. Sadly, most of the solutions might not work. For my YATW(You and the World) project me and my partner are going out in the world and going to try to find a solution to this impending issue.

 Hello, my name is Kara Heenan and I am a freshman at Science Leadership Academy. For a project in English 1, Ms. Dunn told us to find an issue in the world that we really care about. The topic I chose is Animal Cruelty. I am against any type of animal abuse. Animals are living, breathing things just like us and they deserve to be treated the same way we do. The type of animals I am mainly going to be focusing on throughout this blog are the two common household pets, dogs and cats.

 First, I would like to discuss the types of abuse there are to these animals and the statistics. According to the Humane Society Hall County,

• 32% of it is neglect or abandonment

• 12%  of it is hoarding

• 11% of it is shooting

• 9% of it is fighting

• 7% of it is beating

 A huge factor in Animal Cruelty in our country are puppy mills. There is no legal definition of a puppy mill, but the ASPCA defines it as "a large-scale commercial dog breeding operation where profit is given priority over the well-being of the dogs." It has been estimated that there are at least 10,000 puppy mills in the U.S. More than 14 states have no laws to even address puppy mills. In these places, dogs are forced to be in cages most of their lives with no room to play or exercise. These places are crawling with dogs affected by illnesses, wounds, and diseases. No one even seems to care!

What an average puppy mill looks like

 Another factor, especially in this country, is hoarding. Hoarding is keeping a high number of animals as pets without being able to take care of them properly. Approximately 900 to 2000 cases are discovered in America with a quarter of a million animals falling victim. Hoarding is usually a side effect of a mental illness in a person. It is a form of neglect. Most of these poor animals are living in a disgusting home without proper care or love but the owner of these dogs do not realize they are doing harm.

 All a dog or cat really needs is love and care. They don’t ask for much. One thing people forget is that these animals have actual feelings like us. We as humans have no right to treat them as they are less important than we are. I hope after reading this article it really opens your eyes to how important it is to treat animals with respect.

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A homeless man with his dog. All you need is love.