My best friend's fat

her has brain cancer, and cancer in his stomach. Everyday after school in November, I went to Lankenau Hospital to support my friend and her father. On November 30 of this year, he was released from the hospital. The cancer had finally spread to the entirety of his stomach and brain; there was nothing else that the doctors could for him except try to comfort him, and give him pain pills. He was far too weak for surgery; it would’ve been very risky to perform it on him at that stage in.

Being there, I learned much more about brain cancer, and just cancer in general. It then became clear to me that it is very important to raise awareness on this disease because it could affect us at any given time in our lives. This is why I chose brain cancer as my topic- I hope to inform people because it is a disease that can heavily impact our lives. I have personally witnessed someone I that I care about forget his own name, due to cancer. I am personally affected by it because I’ve seen its effects as recently as yesterday.

I plan to raise awareness thro

ugh trendy things such as t-shirts and buttons (pins)-things that teens could catch on to. That sort of advertisement, in my opinion, would be the most effective way to raise awareness to that one specific audience. Though to target a larger demographic, I would have to incorporate interests that mi

ght appeal to that group. However, there isn’t much anyone can do to stop cancer in general, until a cure is found. But what matters is showing just the extent to which cancer can affect the lives of the patient as well as his or her family. Being caring and supportive people is what matters. 

Brain tumors are one of every one out of one hundred cancers diagnosed in just the United States every year. These being the most deadly tumors because there is no room for it to go inside of your skull. Which in turn causes the cancer to spread which is the most fatal part to having this kind of cancer. The person in which I had initially done this blog on has since passed it is going on almost a month now since the passing of my friend’s dad. It was most painful to watch someone die so slow over the course of a year. It was probably even more painful for him knowing that he was also going away and he watched his family and friends try to do anything to save him. In fact there was nothing anyone could do at all. The chances of him even surviving this illness were slim to none already. 

Most of what I am writing is based off of opinion since I witnessed first hand what it was like to see someone going through such a painful illness. The entire time he expressed that he just wanted to live which was horrible to hear because he was in fact begging for something that no one could aside from make him comfortable and wait around until that one day where everything shuts down because your body is so sick of fighting. I recall him asking for constant pain medication and something to make this headache go away. Later, the cancer had officially spread through his entire body which made everyone give up hope.  I was unaware at exactly how fatal this form of cancer was and why once it had spread they let him come home. I was numb to the fact that this deadly strain of cancer which most people do not survive was killing him and once someone is gone you can not get them back.

I tend to take a more opinionated stance on this subject because it directly affected me. I look at the facts and understand them but at the same time I feel like for all cancer it is really a matter of luck whether you survive or not because it is so rough on the body it really takes a toll on the whatever organs it decides to spread to next leaving the body weak; so weak that you cannot even perform surgery on it to directly go after where the cancer is. The entire idea of cancer is tricky, especially brain cancer. This is scary because he was perfectly healthy the cancer essentially came out of no where. One out of twelve people in my survey knew/know someone who has had cancer.

Types of cancer brought up in the survey were brain, breast, and lung; along with other cancers which were listed under “other”. 80% of people who did know someone with a form of cancer did not not survive. Eight out of twelve people said they would be open to donating money to cures for cancer of all sorts. Eight out of twelve people have also never donated to cures for cancer, but would be open to doing it. Finally one out of twelve people said that cancer has had an impact on their life.

Here is the link to my b

Ever wonder where else child trafficking occurs besides foreign countries? If yes, I have the answer. Child trafficking occurs right here in the United States. California, New York, Texas, Nevada, and Ohio are hot spots. Child prostitution is growing at this very second. Within forty-eight hours of a runaway or homeless girl is approached by a pimp. These girls are between the ages of twelve and fourteen. 

When brought into the life of prostitution the girls are trafficked in and out of the US. From city to city, and country to country. There is a triangle between Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Sacramento. Because of the diversity, its easier to move the children from place to place. This makes it difficult for law enforcement to locate victims that could be alive. 

​I will be working with a new ministry at my church to help stop child trafficking. Working with this ministry will help me get a better understanding about the topic and more information to help. Even though this a dangerous topic I still want to help because the starting age to child prostitution is close to my age. Child Trafficking ISN’T right. 

HELP THEM, THEY NEED YOUR HELP!

Speedy scientific advances in the 1800s allowed humans to delegate unpleasant tasks to fossil fuels, and we began to innocently extract these resources from the earth in many different forms. There is a twist to this happy fairytale though. Human greed, lethargy and corruption drove us deeper and deeper into a spiral of addiction. We pillaged and plundered the very earth that provided for us. We grew fat, as individuals and as a race, creating unhealthy lifestyles and living conditions for ourselves. We have crippled the Earth, making it less and less supportive of life as we know it by spewing toxic chemicals into the air, destroying habitats and unbalancing ecosystems. The most impressive part? We have utterly redefined what it means to be a living creature by demanding that the Earth provide every little amenity for us at the lowest personal cost - all in the last 200 years.

To me, it makes perfect sense that the group we need to focus on educating first and foremost is children. This generation of kids will be among those facing the most drastic human-caused changes in our world that we have seen yet. It seems natural that these people should know the intricacies of sustainable living by heart. It should be their first instinct. Despite this, environmental education is still lacking severely in public school systems in high schools, let alone in middle schools and elementary schools. The EPA has given out more than 3,500 grants for environmental education programs since 1992, a nod in the right direction, but one organization giving out grant money can not turn the tide of a massive country like the United States. What we need is a revising of our priorities. Environmental education programs should not be optional individual programs, they should be mandated and integrated into schools of all economic or racial statuses. As of 2007, only 12 states require integration of environmental education and environmental literacy programs in K-12 schools. This cannot be accepted. Its time to spread successful environmental education to every corner of the United States, before its too late.

An ongoing bibliography

• Nuclear missiles, Rockets
• Food shortages
• Being cut off from the world
• People being unaware of who was leading them

Hunger according to the Oxford English Dictionary 1971 is the want or scarcity of food by someone or some where.  People may associate the main cause of hunger with the shortage of food supplies, but the leading cause today of hunger is poverty. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), 3 billion people, almost half the world lives on less than $2.50 a day, and nearly 8 million people die each year because they can’t afford to stay alive. The largest poverty stricken regions of the world are Asia and the Pacific, then the Sub-Saharan Africa, next Latin America and the Caribbean, the near East and North Africa, and last other developing countries.

Homelessness is the state of not having a constant and adequate home or nighttime residence. Homeless people may take refuge on the streets, in shelters, cars, abandoned buildings, or with friends or family. According to the National Alliance to End Hunger, roughly over 640,000 to 2.5 million people experience homelessness in the U.S., let alone 100 million and counting are homeless in the world. And of the U.S. of the homeless population, 40% are families with children, 1.37 million of the population are under the age of 18, 41% are single males, and 14% are single females. Shockingly, of the homeless population, veterans make up 40% it. The greatest cause of homelessness yet again is poverty. The other leading causes are lack of affordable housing, unemployment, substance abuse, and mental illness. In America, Alaska and California have the highest rates of homelessness. But in the world, India, Nigeria, and China have the largest homeless populations. 

There are many organizations out there to help put end to the homeless epidemic, such as the National Alliance to End Homelessness. This organization is one of the leading alliances to committed to preventing and ending homelessness. Other organizations such as Project H.O.M.E., is a Philadelphia based organization that empowers communities to break the cycle of homelessness and poverty. The Just Life is another organization that aides the homeless. It is a Christian organization that is committed to being agents of social change by living out righteousness and justice in the world.

An organization the have been founded to aid the hungry is the World Food Programme or the WFP, which was founded by the U.N. is the second largest humanitarian organization is the world that adresses world-wide hunger. The Hunger Project is also a charitable organization that is dedicated to an end in world hunger. And Bread For the World is a Christian organization that urges our nation’s decision makers to end hunger. 

Homelessness and hunger are urgent issues that should be tackled. So make your voice known. Petition the Congress to pass legislation to aid the hunger and homeless, volunteer at local homeless shelters and food banks, donate to these causes, listen to the cries of the victims impacted by these issues, just do something to make a difference. They need your help.

            The importance of eating well is an issue that resonates with me and is of importance to a big part of the world.  Whether it is because of how food tastes or because of the healthfulness of what we eat, but all of us take seriously what we eat and it concerns us that not everyone in America is able to do so.  This is why for my You and the World project I will focus on the problem of the lack of access to healthy foods experienced by different segments of our society based on socio-economic standing.  These areas of low access to healthy foods are called “food deserts.”  The US government defines food deserts as “a census tract that contains concentrations of low income people in which at least a third of the population lives more than a mile from a supermarket or large grocery store.” (Bornstein) Some people blame this lack of availability of good food for the obesity crisis in America especially in poorer urban neighborhoods, while others assert that this lack of accessibility is overstated. I will attempt to make sense of these arguments.

            People have been talking about the problem of “food deserts” in low-income, inner city neighborhoods for over a decade now. They are considered to be the byproduct of the abandonment of these neighborhoods by the major supermarket food stores in the later twentieth century and their replacement in these areas by the proliferation of fast food chains. For many people in these areas, it is simply too much of a burden to have to travel over a mile to the nearest grocery store to by fresh fruits and vegetables.  It is even more difficult considering that most of these people don’t own cars to transport their goods in, or are elderly, or have small children to look after. Instead of eating fruits and vegetables and in general eating well, people living in these “food deserts” are living off of processed foods high is sugar and fat and washing this stuff down with a soft drinks that are mostly sugar.  The problem is that junk food is extremely cheap and readily available, while healthy food is expensive and hard to find.  An additional factor complicating this issue is that while sweet and salty foods clearly taste good, they equally as clearly are destroying the health of people living in these areas.

            A major question, however, is how real is this concept that equates the relative poor health and high rate of obesity in poorer neighborhood due to the lack of accessibility?  Until recently it was accepted by most people that the presence of food deserts was the major contributing factor to the relative poorer health of inner city inhabitants, but recent studies have raised doubts about this correlation. (Bornstein)  Other issues, such as income, education, or culture may be even more important factors, but no study can deny the obvious importance that the scarcity of well-stocked supermarkets and other groceries has on the lack of healthy foods.

Graph of citizens affected by food deserts in Chicago here

That is why efforts to offer more food possibilities to these neighborhoods are so worthwhile.  Something has to be done to offer more choices other that expensive, hard to get healthy food and cheap deadly junk food.  One of the suggestions for reducing this problem was having “Mobile pantries”, which is when they open up a stand of boxes of different types of food. These foods are donated for this purpose and they are given out for free to everyone who is there with no proof of need being required.  Mobile pantries, however, have many faults. Since it is expensive to provide free food for so many people it takes a while to gather the amount of required donations, which leads to food distribution being less frequent than people need it to be. There are so many people in need at these mobile pantries that the line is tediously long leaving some wondering if it is even worth the wait.  

The perfect solution to this vexing problem of the limited availability of healthy food in poor neighborhoods is still waiting to be tried.  It will most likely take a combination of both public and private efforts, but what we need right now is the conviction that food deserts are a serious problem needing an immediate solution. 

Many of us as teens have heard the stereotype that all we care about is what we look like who we talk to and what is going to happen next for us. Essentially the adults in the world put us in one big box labeled teenagers and let us fight for ourselves through the 3 years of middle school and the 4 years of high school. These seven years in our lives are the ones that shape and mold us. We are transitioning in our lives from children to adults. We also are experiencing many new things that stick with us for the rest of our lives. Whether it is good or bad it stays with you and affects you in some way. Sometimes it affects you in the short term and you make some decisions that aren't the best for you or the people around you. Those decisions are made based on many things that happen in these seven years or even earlier. The decision may also be based on depression and teen depression is a little special compared to other depressions.

The things that influence our decisions in life can be from something so small like someone telling you that they think you should do this or that to something as a person who is very close to you dying. The decisions make us the way we are and when you are depressed your mind isn't in the correct mindset for you to be making big decisions. If you are depressed and you are a teen it can make your decisions a little more rash than one of an adult. The Facts say that self harm is most common in Girls From ages 15 to 24. Thats is what makes it interesting though because if you just search Anything with self harm in teens the search automatically goes to teen depression in girls and those are all the suggestions too. One statistic on teen suicide, I found that is very interesting is that boys are 4x more likely to die from suicide than girls. However, the girls are more likely to attempt suicide. So the boys are more likely to complete a “successful” suicide than girls but the girls attempt more times than the guys.