Philadelphian Food Deserts

Hi! During my last two posts, I talked about the food access in Philly. In my first one,I explained how social this issue was and how hard it was for someone who lived in a disfavored area or someone who didn’t enough money to get healthy food. In my second blog post, I commented the survey that I sent to people. All in all, I was nicely surprised by what the people told me because I actually thought the situation was even worst.

While doing more researches, I discovered really positive changes and actions in Philadelphia during the last couple years. The most relevant for me was a man named Jeff Brown who built big food stores in food deserts, like North Philly. For more information, you can click on that link which will lead you to a very interesting video that is describing this process. For me, this way to change is just the best, the most accurate and also the more logical: how to fix food deserts problem? Just build a food store! This helps a really big amount of people and is one of the best solution to this problem.

At the beginning, I didn’t know what I was able to do for my Agent of Change, but Ms.Giknis gave me a good option: giving a map in a Philly food desert with all the grocery stores near them on it.

This is the kind of spots that were present in this area

I went to a North Philly area with literally nothing around. I gave my papers to people in the streets while smiling. Most of them accepted my paper and asked me more about it. Although, I had an issue: nobody wanted me to take them in picture, I don’t even know why, they probably thought I was doing tourism because I have a pretty strong accent and I don’t live here. I still took picture of the place. Besides this problem, I really felt helpful and I knew that I was making a change happens, so this is probably the most positive fact about this entire project: we are useful!

I think that I made a change because while giving them this map, smiling and explaining what was my project about, I’m pretty sure that some of the people remembered me and were aware of my issue. Also, they knew if they didn’t already where were all the healthy grocery stores near them.

Me in the area with my maps in the hand, looking if the person is coming to me...

I thought that this project was very good and I am very happy to have completed it, even if this is late! It was the first time of my life where I knew that something related to school was actually useful in a way and was making a difference. I learned that I love helping people, even if I kinda knew it already. I also learned that the people in food deserts are actually just waiting for more help and feel unlistened (even if I expected that too!). I think something I could have done better would be to meet the timelines on time, as always!  

English 9

                                                  Singing about drugs and it’s ok

Hi there. My name is Josiah Mast and I have been attending SLA for freshman year of highschool. While there my class was given the assignment of trying to impact something that we are passionate about. I decided to do Medical and recreational Marijuana. I went with that topic because I feel that I have a real connection with the idea of marijuana being legalized so that my state and city can become a better place. Earlier in my slate post #1 and #2 I had written about how I want to be able to really change this schools view on marijuana because they believe that promoting the illegal substance should not be tolerated. I wanted to be able to show the school that by enforcing this rule that they were trapping people identities beneath their surface so that they couldn’t express their true identities. I conducted a survey and got phenomenal results from it(see slate post #2). I got help from Ellie siegel a woman that is fighting in the state of pennsylvania to make marijuana legalized for medical and recreational use. She gave me a few pointers on my first doc and then we lost contact somehow. I was wondering how I was going to come up with a slatepost 3 when I hadn’t changed anything. Than that's when it hit me that  I had changed SLA in a way. A not so long ago I had written a song about marijuana and sang it in the hallways while walking to the next class. People would run over and sing the songs and I would talk to them about how I really felt that it was wrong that medical and recreational marijuana were illegal in the state of Pa. People would agree and talk to me about how they felt. These little conversations here and there might impact them for the rest of their life. I have always said that talking to someone who is older and has made up their mind about this topic as not as useful as telling someone now when they have the next 3 years of high school and college were when they enter another conversation like the one they had with me they can think back on it and try to change others minds as well. People might just remember me while they are eating dinner in like 10 years from now and tell the story about me and use the knowledge I gave them to give to others. I am already looking back and am glad I didn’t write a letter because it probably would have been boring. It has been proven the things that are boring have less of an effect on things that are entertaining. Besides I didn’t want to do something that I wasn’t passionate about. This freshman year was all about who you are. I am not a person that writes formal letters. I write letters that are songs and that can change a freshman class’s minds on  a topic that I am passionate about.

In my previous blog post I stated that I wanted to work to stop Transphobia, I was having trouble coming up with ways to stop it seeing as it is social. My teacher Ms.Giknis offered me the opportunity to work with my friends Kenzie and Mike seeing that we had projects that focused on similar problems. While working together we brainstormed on a way to change or improve our problems. We decided that we would hold a bake sale to raise money and donate to an anti bullying foundation.

We all agreed  to hold a bake sale to raise money to donate to an anti bullying foundation. We decided on a date and what to bring. Kenzie planned to bake cookies and bring them in school. Michael planed to buy a box of donuts to bring in the day of the bake sale. The day before the sale I spent the night baking about five dozen cookies to sell at lunch. The day of the bake sale we sold all of our donuts and all of Kenzie’s cookies. During lunch I sold the cookies I baked for 25 cents a piece. The cookies were received relatively well and I sold about four out of the five dozen.

After the bake sale Kenzie And Michael and I raised 42 Dollars.After doing some research, we decided to donate the money to the Stop Bullying Now Foundation. The foundation allows access to professional speakers and counselors to stop bullying the short term. For the long term they aim to raise awareness

about bullying of all sorts. This means that they also offer help for bullying for LGBTQ kids . I feel that Mike, Kenzie and I could have raised more money if we had sold everything.  

In retrospect I wish that we had announced the bake sale so we had more people buying cookies. My entire project was rushed in the end and I wish that I did not procrastinate. But plan to do better work in the future, and I am happy that Mike Kenzie and I could come together to make a good project. I wish we had more time to make posters or generally present in front of our classmates, but i think as a group we put in effort to some sort of a change and/or raise awareness in our freshmen class and I am proud of what we did.

In Conclusion, my You and the world project was regrettably rushed. I feel like if I had put more work into it and had got my blog post finished it would have been a better project in the end. I appreciate my friend Joshua for being so open and letting me interview him. I also appreciate Mike and Kenzie for being good group members and  bringing in food for the bake sale. Hope that this project has made an impact and I am glad to have been given the opportunity to do it.  

Slate post #3

For my agent of change I asked my classmates to help design a poster that showed what they feel this generation means to them. I picked the poster because i was inspired by ben and his poster. I chose to have my classmates draw on it instead of me because I wanted them to show everyone what they think.

The experience was fun, everyone, everyone was interested. people drew pictures of social media and hashtags. I hope that people will see this poster and decide to dig into this some more.

Reflection:

This entire project has been a variable Whirlwind of confusion and sheer pain and annoyance. I struggled a lot to stay on top of my work and to balance this project with the 20 other projects I had this quarter. I have learned nothing from this project and it has nearly ruined a friendship I had spent this entire year building up.

Hello again. In my first post I discussed how my topic changed from the dc girls crisis into minors running away.  In my second post I discussed my original research. I conducted my original research by putting out a survey about what people knew about running away. In this post I will be sharing my third part of my project and my agent of change.   

Continuing my research about minors running away I found some organizations that try to help. Basically what they do is, they run a 24 hour service where teenages can reach them via text , call or email to express their thoughts. This is a good way  to help the problem because it's not a lot of other options someone could do to prevent minors from running away and putting themselves in danger. Youthline is a great organization for not only minors that are running away but other things issues too. Adults and teenagers will answer on the Youthline. I think that is great because sometimes teenagers want to talk to other teenagers because they don't fully trust adults.

For my agent of change I decided to make posters with the numbers to contact runaways hotlines. Before I came up with that idea I didn't know how I was going to reach teens without overwhelming them with facts. By talking to my peers I came up with the idea to make posters. The first obstacle of making posters was that they could not be boring they would have to draw somebodys attention. Secondly I had to decide what information I was going to put on the posters to help. Lastly where I was going to put them up. On the posters I put two numbers on the posters, National Runaway Safeline and Youthline. I was effective in making a change because by me posting the posters teenagers that might be considering running away will see them and call the number.

When my teacher introduced this project I was excited because I got to choose something that was important to me. Also I really liked the fact that we would be doing the project on or own without having to meet a lot of deadlines. I've not only learned a lot about my topic but myself over the course of this project. Something I've learned about myself is that I enjoy helping others. My whole project was to prevent people from putting themselves in danger. Discovering this about myself could be the first step to figuring out what job I want to be when I get older. Doing this project I've listened to my peers and what was important to them. Seeing the topics my peers chose showed me that everyone was different and has been through different experiences. Overall I feel as though it brought my whole english class together. And  was a great miniature version of the 12th grade capstone that I will have to do in the future.

For more information check out my annotated bibliography

In my first blog post, I talked about body image and how It is an issue connected to me, that I wanted to focus on for my project. I did research on body image, how models are portrayed and how that along with social media affects people. In my second blog post I talked about a survey that I created to see how people in the Science Leadership Academy (SLA) community feel about body image. I wrote about the responses I got and explained what they meant.

After doing my survey I wanted to see what organizations were making any effort to change the stereotype of the perfect body image, or how people feel about their body. I found out that dove has a project called the “Dove Self-Esteem Project”. The project is trying to boost girls confidence and raise self esteem. I think that this is a great organization trying to make a change, because they are a very big and well know company that is making awareness. When they have commercials they also mention their project trying to make people aware of the issue.

Now at this point I needed to do my agent of change. My plan for my agent of change was to create a presentation for my advisory that explained my you and the world project overall. I wanted to make people in the SLA community aware of how other people in the community feel about body image. I wanted to overall tell them what I learned from this project. In my presentation I shared how body Image was connected to me, the information I found online from research, and the most important information I received from my survey. During the presentation I began to kind or feel emotional because the issue was personal and I was sharing both my experience and what I learned.

Overall this project taught me a lot, Both about the community and body image. I learned a lot of information about how body image effects people as a whole and the ones we see everyday. This project was easy to complete, due to it being something that I am passionate about. The project was never boring. This project opened up a part of myself that I didn't know about. I didn't know that body image was an issue in our community. But after looking deep into myself I learned that it was something that was affecting me when I was younger and is now affecting people in my community. I feel like this project should be expanded. If i was to continue this I would want the whole school to be aware of the issue and I would want to make a better agent of change that helps people dealing with body image issues. I probably should have stayed on top of my work and always use my time productively. I probably would have got more done. But overall I loved this project and i would do it again whenever. I am so glad that this project was assigned, I would have never learned so much about body image.

Micah Carrera        English 9

You & The World                                                                                                  Agent of Change

My topic is Nursing Home abuse. I have two main goals for this project. First, I want to raise awareness to people who do not have an Elder in a Nursing Home so that if they see it in a Nursing Home or hear about it, they know the situation and how to handle it correctly. I researched an organization  that teaches you how to correctly/controllably handle a situation in reporting Nursing Home Abuse. Secondly, I want people who do have an Elder in a Nursing Home or plan to place their Elder in a Nursing Home to be aware of events that could be potentially happening or potential to happen.

For my third checkpoint of the You and the World project, we were given the task of creating an  Agent of Change project. Our task in this was to find something we could do to accomplish our goal of the You and the World Project. We could host an event, create a poster, make a presentation. For my Agent Of change, I created a presentation that I hosted in the conference room. I presented on my topic for the You and the World which was Nursing Home Abuse. I have discussed about Nursing home abuse in Slate post #1 and Slate post #2. I also created a Survey  which I would love for you to fill out. It would help me so much. So for my presentation I created a slide show. The slide show basically described what my topic was and my main goals were in making this project. I also explained the most common types of abuse in these nursing homes. These types are mental abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse, and sexual abuse. My presentation was very successful and I feel that I accomplished my two main goals. I had about 18 to 20 people come for my presentation. Three of those people had a Elder in a nursing home. So it was great to let them know about events that could potentially be happening to their Elder. I also introduced the survey that I created in Slate post #2. My audience was very interested in the types of abuse and they had many questions about how often they occurred and if they really occurred. People were really stuck on how Elders are sexually abused, which is the sad truth. These are the moments that touch people to care more about these things and be more aware and spread the word. So in conclusion, I am very happy with my You and the World project and my Agent of Change section. I believe that I reached the goals that I set myself to achieve.

Annotated Bibliography

Has anybody ever realized that everyone has problems? That every single person on this earth is going through some tough situation. It may not be so bad, but to the person it is. Sometimes a person just needs someone to just be there for them. For my fourth quarter English benchmark we had to choose an important topic and make a change. I chose Addiction. I realized not many people talk about it or really see it as the problem it really is. To make that change I first started with a lot of research on addiction and how a person becomes addicted and how it affects others. Then I did a survey to see how common addiction was. After getting those results I wanted to make sure the people who were affected by addiction knew that they weren’t alone.

At first, I wasn’t really sure on how I can make the change that I wanted to make. I wanted people to understand why addicts are addicts, and why it wasn’t their or the addict's fault. Knowing that there’s nobody to blame can save a lot less trouble, and can send some help to the situation. I didn’t want people to feel this stress from what I chose to do that would cause them to realize “Oh that’s me I don’t care.” I mainly didn’t want to say my opinion or phrases like “It will get better”. I wanted people to know the facts, so I took all of my research from my first and second blog post (including my survey) and made it into a brochure.

Pictures of Brochure

My brochure took a bit of time to put together, but it turned out great! I was targeting the audience that knew an addict and was affected by it, and the addicts themself. I made over 70 copies and handed them out to the students who go to Science Leadership Academy. One thing I was worried about was putting people under pressure. I was worried handing out a brochure to one specific person would make them think I was implying something. When I handed these out I made sure to go to groups of people and say, “Hey guys. do you want a brochure?” That left a lot of mystery on what it was, and if somebody really wanted to read they didn’t have to do it then and was able to save it for later. My brochure turned out to be a really good idea thankfully! I had a few students come up to me and say, “Thank you for making this. I struggle with this problem and I love what you wrote about.” That made me feel really good and helped me realized how truly important addiction is.

Picture of me handing out Brochures

I was really curious how much awareness is being raised for addiction so I decided to do some research. I ended up finding a website that gives you the 9 best charities for addiction. I personally think these charities are a great way to help with people who have an addiction. The main things these charities donate to is research on addiction, rehabs, and scientific methods to help cure addiction. Rehabs try to help people stay sober, but it is known that if you only go one time it is likely not to work compared to going 2-3 times that really helps a person to realize that it’s time to end the situation they are in. It is really great that there are charities out there to help, so donate now to help.

Overall, this has been a great experience, and I am really happy that I did it. I myself know some addicts and one has actually recently relapsed. With my new gathered information on addiction I was really able to help the person. One thing the person said was, “It was really easy to talk to you about this, and I’m really happy you understand.” Something I could have done better was my annotated bibliography because I fell a little behind on it. There is still a lot to be done on addiction. Hopefully there will be more people to help addicts, and some thing to help cure it. I have this feeling of success when I think about this project and hope all my readers enjoy reading and learning about everything I discovered. I also hope it has made an impact on everyone as much as it has on me.