Haiti report

Haiti has been denied the right to have freedom of speech many times, and the U.N is trying to stop this. I think the only way to stop it is to get a new government.

There are many difficulties while recovering from the earthquake in Haiti, one of which is that the government has crumbled down to nothing. The U.N has taken the lead now. But with a long history of a corrupt government and rebellion, it is hard to see if it will actually get better. Some countries can rebuild faster than this if they have money, if they are not an island and if they have a government up to the task. The biggest thing that put Haiti at a disadvantage was it's history of a corrupt government, corrupt leaders and corrupt military. I don't think the country will cope very well, and if it ever does get back on it's feet, it would have to owe a lot of countries favors because without a suitable government, there is no way it can get help by itself. But if the U.N. keeps helping, and we help to, Haiti could get back to normal in a few years.
I thought the Haiti game of life was very agonizing and confusing. One bad thing could happen and the whole family would suffer. But I guess that's what happens in real life.
The game was about a better life in four years. You could have focused on one of four strategies; 1. to get lots of money, 2. to get education, 3. to just live your life in happiness and 4. to be healthy. I would describe it as a good game to play if you are trying to understand what can happen if you have no money.
The primary objective I chose was education because with education you can get better jobs and that means more money and that means you can care for the family better.
You needed to balance the work out, so each family member gets a bit of education, a bit of rest and a bit of work.
I tried to make sure everybody got a bit of education and one person didn't get all of it. This didn't work because it took too long for anyonProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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to get a good level of schooling.
I think parents would choose to devote so much effort in sending their children to school because they are trying to give them a better life than they had and to give them opportunities in life.
The summer holidays were a big obstacle in trying to keep the children in school because you needed to get tutors and they cost more money. Also, trying to keep a good income coming in for the school was a big obstacle and often I needed to pull the child in school back and send him to work.
The holidays coincided with those of New Zealand, like Christmas and Easter, but other than that, it didn't have much in common with my own country.
Because many people don't have the education to educate children and they don't have the money. Because if the parents don't have education then it becomes incredibly hard to give your children education.
So the people of that country can have opportunities and be able to help the country. Instead of needing a voice, educated people of that country can be come the voice. Women need education in developing countries so they can claim their rights and become proper people.
They could send more resources and money to the rural areas and build schools so the people can put more time into education. They could also develope the houses so the women do not have to walk for hours to get water. that would give them more time to go to school.
I found the chart, but it was all in French, but mum can kind of read French and it looks like most things have improved apart from the extreme poverty rate. That has gone up. Here is the address: http//:www.ht.undp.org/public/omdhaiti.php

Shark fin reflection.

In this Shark fin awareness project, we tried to make the school aware of what is happening to the sharks in the world. We used a lunch time to have a short shark fin festival. We held games, activates and bake sales. I think this project did work, and that we did make a difference because people were walking out of the room saying, "I'll never eat shark fin soup again!" Also the people that came to the festival saw the videos of what happens to the sharks, and some of them were pretty disturbing. If I ate shark fin soup on a regular basis and then watched those videos I would

not be having it again.

If I were doing this project again I would try to promote the videos more so people would become more aware, because not a lot of people were actually watching them because of the games and other activities. I think I learned a lot about shark fining and the horrors people are doing to them. I learned all about long line fishing and how people need it for a good income. I also learned about how you need to have a good plan for an action project, so it isn't messy or confusing. Overall, I think that this Shark fin project was a big success.

From Predator to Prey

http://planetsave.com/files/2009/02/sharkfins.jpg

Sharks finning happens all over the world. Dodgy organizations long-line fish, catching not only sharks, but all the other fish that happen to get caught. These organizations, sometimes legally, sometimes illegally, get the sharks up from the water into the boat, cut off all the fins and throw the sharks back into the water. This may sound like a humane thing to do, letting them go, but you try and go swimming with no

limbs. The sharks can't swim anymore so they sink to the ocean floor, waiting to die. What was the main predator of the sea for 400 million years, has now become the prey. This is a complete outrage because the fins don't have any taste at all, so sharks fin soup is just plain soup. The fins are actually just like ear cartilage and have no taste. Whats more is that people sell the fins for heaps of money and more people think that eating sharks fin soup signifies class. It really only signifies ignorance.

We do have an acton plan, to educate the school of this horror. On May 20th, we are going to have a sharks fin day, with activities to help promote how bad sharks finning is. The few weeks before will be for raffles and assemblys to educate the school. A few days before, we may be showing sharkwater at lunches when you need to by tickets.

Watch these videos to find out mProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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e!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im7W1AnDmgA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YprXxDccXM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMYtuMgwNCY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlMKicE5Uqc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFQ04kERoI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN23hZqccR8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xysF2zyxn-s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smyyhEnhINc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2UKgLsOhRM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnHN8m7APtw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCqPXhhxZIg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7TqTEtbmY8

Global Issues and Malaysia Week

In Malaysia Week, we saw a few global issues, but it was not as bad as some other sites. As we were rafting back to the bus on Thursday, I noticed shampoo clumps in the river. Bunches of white bubbles and I realized it was the shampoo we had been using for showers in the river. That was the only big issue we saw, but we saw others, like the food waste we had dropped on the beach. We had tried to put all of our food waste in the compost bin. I thought it was strange how we had to throw our meat and bones in the river and forest. It was very nice at night because you could actually see the stars, they weren't blocked by the pollution of KL. I think we might have actually caused some pollution on the first day. We were adding to the fire when we found remains of balloons everywhere and we chucked them into the fire to see if they would burn or not. It was only afterwards that someone told us about how the balloons had been releasing toxic fumes into the environment while burning.

Global Issues Article Answers

1. The world bank is a charity organization who loans money and resources to the poor. There are 184 countries involved.
2. It is important to have 73 countries analyzed for poverty because every country has a different view of poverty and every country has different kinds of poverty. It helps us know what disparity there is on earth.
3. Poverty is when you do not have the money to get the three basic needs and so you struggle to survive.
4. Extreme poverty is when you have none of the basic needs but you never have them and every day is a fight for survival.
   
5. A poverty trap is when you are stuck in poverty and cannot get out. It is when your family is in poverty and when your grand parents were in poverty. So you have been stuck in poverty for 3 generations.
6. The world bank defines poverty as short of the basic needs and living under one dollar a day.
7. There were 3 billion people.
8. The numbers are going up and not down.
9. You could donate food and clothing to the poor.
10. Once in Holland my dad and I were eating KFC in the city and a poor woman came up and asked us for money. I was actually scared because you don't usually see beggar's in places like that.
    

3rd World Farmer

3rd world farmer is a game we played to understand how difficult it can be to survive in poverty, when you do not have a voice, not have education, no medicine and no money. It is a strategy game that takes lots of caution and if you do not start out right the chances are your family will die. You have to plant certain things that give you money each year but anything can happen. You can be robbed, there could be fires, your well can cave in, there are so many things that could go wrong, and that is what it is like in the real world.

Strategies that worked were all things to do with security. You needed a secure source of water, you needed a diverse food supply so when one thing died in a year you would always have another thing, you needed to save up your money for better security, you needed crop insurance, and education and medicine and most of all, a voice. A representative so you can be recognized by the world. For 3rd world farmer you needed to think long term to survive, you needed to make decisions that might not work out so well as soon as you made them but heavily affect the way you live in the end for the better.

Strategies that did not work were all the short term decisions that did not guaranty good security. Decisions like selling your children, this would result in a little bit of money as soon as you sold them, but soon you would need them again. Allowing people to use your land for waste, as that would poison your family and crops, and military posts, that would lead to people stealing your crops. These might give you a bit of money at the start but would always result in something bad happening in the end.

The SLR that links to this game is Reason critically because of all the long term decisions you had to make. Those decisions were difficult to find and make. You needed a good strategy at the start that you could rely on but, as I said before, anything can happen in that time. It all depends on skill and a certain amount of luck.

Global Issues Wordle

Global Issues to me means Issues that should be fixed. Global Issues are things like poverty and problems in the environment. I think the main subject of Global Issues is Poverty because every other issue links to poverty. It is like Poverty is the start of the food chain. Things like starvation, and cruelty to the environment and education. Global Issues are important because the developed country's caused half of these issues and are causing more, even though some might be trying to help. Also, if we do not help these issues will continue to expand and come to the more wealthy country’s. Already in most of the major cities in the world have massive amounts of poverty, it is not just in the less economicly developed countries. However, it is not just the peoples fault; It is more geographical than anything else. Most of the developed country's are rich in the recources we need to survive. Mainly food and water. It is close to impossible to even out the recources in the world. The scales are tipped too much. If someone actually got up and tried to do something it would take years.
Global Issues ties in with living ethically, one of our SLRs, because Global Issues asks so much for us to be environmentally friendly. Living Ethically is exactly that. Living Ethically is just another way of saying, “Be aware of global issues and help,” It is considering other people. In the class we are learning how to care for other people in other places. We are becoming more and more aware and responsible about behavior and the environment. The environment is not just plants and animals but the social environment as well and the economy. Global Issues are really huge but we are learning how to start small.

What it Means to Live in Poverty

What does it mean to live in poverty? What does it mean to not have the simple things that you or I have? I will tell you what it means. It means not having the basic needs to survive; water, food, shelter and sanitation. If you do not have those, what else can you have. If you do not have those needs then you cannot possibly live a good life. You will always be working to survive and have no room in your head to think long term. You might have to give up things you wouldn't normally give up to survive, such as sell your children to get enough money for just a few months. You could ask for money, but you could get an extreme interest rate which you may never be able to pay back so you will always have this huge weight on your shoulders. I suppose you already know this but, poverty's tough. And people take advantage of poverty and send them to work on cheap rates and the poor can't do anything about it. That is why we need to help and that is why the U.N. have vowed to end poverty by 2015.