My Blog Post #1 was focused on introducing my issue I wanted to bring awareness to. I discussed why it interested me and why teen peer pressure is significant to myself, me, and people across the world. I touched on interesting information of teen peer pressure. For example, I explained why many peer pressure professionals and people say that teen girls go through the rough stages of teen peer pressure more often than teenage boys. In my Blog Post #2, I mainly focused on finding new information on my topic and explaining what I learned. I summarized my work from my Blog Post #1 and finally begin telling my readers what my results was from my Original Research, which I created a Teen Peer Pressure Survey. I discussed my results from the survey and gave my opinion on the outcome of it. During my research on this issue, I found out there are more and more organizations going to different schools around the world to talk to the students on peer pressure as a whole and bullying. Like I discussed in Blog Post #2, Connection between Bullying and Peer Pressure. There are many videos on the topic as well to raise awareness. Here go one interesting video I found during my research…Teen Peer Pressure Experiment

Teen Giving Into the Pressure

“Be strong and don’t give into the pressure like this young teen is about do”

I am satisfied with the way the awareness of Teen Peer Pressure is being spread. Teen Peer Pressure mainly happens in school and with professionals going to explain to the students how to do the right thing and learn how to not be another victim to Teen Peer Pressure. For my Agent of Change, I made a website and a presentation to create awareness of this issue. My website consists of many stories that other teens went through, real life stories I found during my research. The presentation I created is linked in my website. In my presentation, I discussed the meaning and significance of Teen Peer Pressure. I also gave three things to do to not get involved with doing negative activities with friends that pressure you into doing.  

For this issue, I have researched and found ways to avoid teen peer pressure. The three steps I found during my research on this topic, which was put out by the American Academy Of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. I emailed this organization multiple times, and unfortunately couldn’t speak to a peer pressure professional, but their website helped me research a lot and learn how to spread more awareness on this issue. Also ways to solve this issue. On my Teen Peer Pressure survey, I made teens open up about their past experiences with this issue and I feel getting those things of their chest and realizing that the pressure isn’t rare, it made them feel better about themselves and who they are as a person. This project was really fun. I had a great time doing research on an issue that affects many people around the world my age, even me. Overall, I strongly agree that this was one of the most compelling projects I did so far at school. I learned that many teens at my school think the same on this topic. My Teen Peer Pressure Survey gave me that conclusion, just what is peer pressure and how they believe it affects teenage boys and girls. This project made me learn where I went wrong and why I got caught in between peer pressure. Not being able to say “NO” to my friends and just not being the leader I always claimed to be. However, experiences like these are always a life lesson and I learned that from different sources that I used to research for my topic.

The only thing I feel I could have done better on this project was reaching out to some more organizations on teenage peer pressure. Yet, I am happy because I did in fact try my best to reach out to American Academy Of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry professionals. The only thing I can say that is left for others and I to do to make a change is to be a leader and a good friend to others who seems to need help standing up for themselves. And this is for Teen Peer Pressure and bully. Like I stated before there is a Connection between Bullying and Peer Pressure

Here is my Annotated Bibliography...

Giving Hope

Giving back to the ones in need. In my two previous blog posts I gave a lot of information on Homelessness. I gave research that I found on the different kinds of people who became homeless and also explained why I chose to pursue this topic. In addition to my blog post #1, In my blog post #2 I also created my own research to gather information on people's opinions on Homelessness and reflected on it.

I woke him from his sleep to give him what i wanted to give him

There's many organizations out there trying to prevent homelessness from spreading in the U.S. One organization I found that is working currently in Philadelphia and it is called ¨Project Home¨. This organization helps break the chain of homelessness and gather volunteers to do so. I support this idea of helping to take down homelessness. By Having people volunteer on their own will to help out the homeless people makes my heart filled with joy. They even accept donations, so they can give to the homeless people. For my Agent Of Change I decided to go out and give some poor homeless people some food/snacks. Not only did I give them snacks but I also went and gave them some word of advice. I told them to keep on moving with life and to keep their head up. I told them that i had faith in them. One of the homeless people, responded with ¨I've been homeless for 22 years¨. I was very surprised and that made me question myself. How can you experience homelessness with your family and friends around you? I felt really nervous doing this project because I am not the type of person to go out there and confront a random stranger. When I went up to the homeless person, I felt really conscious of the people around me and what they would think but I overcame that and did what I needed to do. I learned that homeless people are often donated to not like I expected. I expected the homeless to be surprised that I gave them food but they weren't they casually took my food and thanked me.

           He's been homeless for 22 years.

Things i could've done better for my agent of change was maybe talk to more homeless and gather more stories. I only gave them some hope and food, I wish I had a longer conversation and gather more information on the homeless and listen to their story on how they got homeless. There's one thing that needs to be done in order for Homelessness to not exist and that is to get the word to the government. In my blog post #2 I talked about how different cities want to drive homeless people out the cities by doing different things like implementing homeless spikes and more. Instead of the government trying to get rid of the homeless people why not help the homelessness by implementing new laws that makes it less likely to be homeless. To rise up together, we need to lift each other up.

Here is my annotated bibliography!

On my first blog post , I described how poverty is an issue in Philadelphia, such as people dying everyday. I tried to bring awareness on what we can do to reduce it. On my second blog post, I went into more detail of what we can do to help and basing my information off my research. Many people responded to it as an issue, but many people did not know it was affecting many others. I tried to explain how the struggle was real for people suffering from poverty.

To bring more awareness about this issue, I am currently doing a canned food drive where people who attend SLA can bring in cans to support a charity. This can bring more awareness to them since when they donate cans, they are understanding the issue better and trying to help reduce it. I am currently still doing a canned food drive and will continue until the end of the school year. After I collect enough, I will bring the cans to the “Chosen 300” which is a charity. This can reduce the amount of children starving since they will be able to eat something.

I feel like people should do more about this issue since it is critically affecting many people today. I don’t think enough people are doing this and I want to make a change so that people can bring in cans to help. I believe this is a good way to help because starving children are caused by poverty and we can help reduce it by just donating some cans.

So far for my agent of change, I told my classmates to bring in some cans and to put it in the advisory memo. I am also currently putting around advertisements with the help of my friends. The advertisement is an ad that tells people to bring in cans for a charity in which you can saves lives. I have about 20 cans as of now, and my goal is to receive at least a hundred.

This is a image of the cans I received so far. This is the advertisement I put up.

For my canned drived, I have about 20 cans. I feel like people who had donated cans and I are really helping people who are starving and we are helping the community. I learned that people would really help out the world if they know about the issue. I also learned that I can make a change if I put my mind to it. As for this canned food drive, I never thought I will be able to even receive 1 can.

          Something that I can definitely do better was volunteer and do more to help out since it feel like cans won’t be enough to put even a small change in poverty. I think it would have been better, if I had done a presentation along with the canned food drive because that way I could bring awareness to those students who have no clue about poverty. I can teach them about it and tell them to donate some cans for the change. I still need to convince some people to bring in cans and others to contribute and donate the cans so I would reach my goal.

My previous blogs have both consisted of information pertaining to police brutality in the past and present. Blog post #1 talked about how long Police Brutality among blacks have been going on which has been since the 1900’s ( civil rights era and segregation) and Blog Post #2 focused on the newer cases of Police Brutality like Freddie Gray that sparked rioting and protesting in cities such as Philadelphia and Baltimore. Some other information I found in my second blog post was that several of these new cases involved victims of white race which was something people were ignorant to.

I want to give you a little background information on how I came up with this idea in the first place. I went through millions of ideas before I got to this final conclusion of just donating. The first thought that came to mind when we were given this project was a video, but then I realized that wouldn’t fit because I am just informing, not necessarily making a change. So, then I thought to do a survey, but I realized that probably wouldn’t get my point across. After thinking and thinking I came up with the idea of selling t-shirts but then I realized how much money a single shirt would cost and I also remembered that I was broke. I was feeling defeat until I googled “ Organizations that are against police brutality”. A couple of different organizations popped up that claimed to protect your rights but I was looking for something known by everyone so I could be sure it was the real deal. I finally came across ALCU and researched a little more about it and then after my studies I clarified it was the one for me.

After completing my project, I began to reflect and I started to feel as if I could have brought more awareness to this by sharing all of this information with people in my school or in my neighborhood and I also thought I could have raised a lot more money but as I thought about the moral I got from this project, I learned that you don’t have to go all out and be outrageous in the things you do to get your point across or help shed some light on a serious situation. You can handle it in a simple form like I did, by donating or volunteering to do work or anything of that sort.

In conclusion, me and the rest of this wonderful organization are not yet done with protecting the right of Americans. We will continue to fight daily against the cons of the American government and also protect our rights given by law !

( To find all links you can visit my annotated bibliography )

In my blog posts one and two I spoke about how unknown Domestic Violence is. It is a sort of hidden, underground issue, yet effects one in four women and one in seven men in America within their lifetimes. It is mostly viewed as a “woman’s issue” because 85% of the abusers are men, and women are more likely to become dominated by an abusive partner. This is not to say that men do not fall victim, domestic violence targets men, women, and children of all races and economic status. One of the primary issues surrounding domestic abuse is that it is extremely hard to inform people that you have fallen victim, sometimes because the bruises are worth the so called “love” they have found. Education is key in stopping this problem facing millions.

Campaigns have been started trying to capture the attention of the people living in a social media dominated world, like Safe Horizon. The campaign is called “#PutTheNailInIt” and teamed up with Miss America 2015, Kira Kazantsev, to help prevent domestic violence by painting your left ring finger purple to pledge against domestic violence. I decided to use this same concept, adapting it to fit my own guidelines. I created my own hashtag, “#NailItPhilly” to track how many people I myself could motiviate to join the movement. I said that we should keep the nail polish movement the same, yet I know many people who are not comfortable painting their nails so I also made it so we could draw a purple X on the same finger. The original campaign also includes donating, and I thought education was most important and most managable for those around me. Domestic violence needs all the attention it can get to help create a brighter future for all of America.

There are many different ways to try and end this issue,

like by using the hashtag by safe horizon and Miss America

I learned a lot through doing this project. I learned that people really look to others for guidance, especially involving this hashtag. At first, no one contributed and posted, but after I got one or two posts, it began to increase the amount of posts. It was hard motivating, and I see how difficult it is for one person to try and spread a hashtag. I would have maybe made it more entertaining for people to want to help if the topic itself was not motivation enough. The ALS ice bucket challenge was very successful and spread through social media very quickly. I could have designed my own challenge which might have turned out with more results. Through this entire project, I learned more about domestic violence and got the amazing opportunity to speak with a representative from a large organization, the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and reflect on how much attention this issue truly needs. I feel like I made an impact, and that is a step in the right direction towards ridding this country of domestic violence.

These are some examples of the people who contributed to my hashtag!

Check out my Annotated Bibliography!

My topic is Autism and as I stated in my first blog post. Nobody really knows a lot about it. This is one of the reasons why I chose this topic the second reason is that it is a topic that hits home with me. Scientists are researching what the possible cause of Autism is and if it can be prevented. All this researching has led the general public to see it as a disease. This is wrong I personally consider autism a mutation that can have different effects depending on the level of the spectrum it is on. This article supports my belief, yet the general public has no idea what Autism is. Therefore I decided to raise money for the Autism society. This society uses its donations to spread the awareness of autism and to provide for people with Autism.

To raise money I held a bake sale and passed out flyers. The point of the flyers was to spread knowledge on what Autism itself is whilst the point of the bake sale was to raise money while educating the school. I raised a total of $245.

Here is one of the flyers that we passed out. After buying something from the bake sale the buyer would receive a flyer.

Here is the cake that we sold slices of. The cake says Autism Awarness on it

To change the general public's view on Autism is a very difficult task. But I believe that by having a bake sale to attract attention and speaking to the buyers about Autism when they arrived was a very good way to at least educate some students in SLA. As I was doing this project I have learned more about children with Autism. I learned that they have a ¨disability¨ that allows them to succeed farther than others in specific categories. I also learned that we need to expand our knowledge on topics such as autism. If you simply only listen to the news about autism then it will sound like autism is a disease that is causing major problems. This is very wrong because after conducting some research I learned that if a person has Autism that is on the law part of the spectrum it is possible for you to not notice that they are autistic. This project has allowed me to feel very accomplished because I feel as though I have successfully spread the knowledge of what Autism really is.

Annotated bibliography

PIC: Agent of Change

Back in my first two blog posts, I discussed the research I had uncovered on the Syrian refugee crisis. In my first blogpost, I talked about how over 11 million Syrians are displaced outside of their homes, with almost 4 million being outside of the country altogether. I talked about how there are people in Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq. I discussed how people are forced out of there country for upwards of 17 years. In my second blogpost I did  my original research, where I interviewed Melissa Fleming of the UNHCR, and found even more information on the crisis. I found that the numbers of refugees is still increasing, showing no signs of slowing down. I found that refugees are having an even harder time getting out of their country, as many of the surrounding countries don’t want to allow too many people over their borders. Many groups, such as the UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) and the IRC (International Rescue Committee) are raising money towards helping refugees, and groups such as the IRC have been using social media to raise awareness of the issue. This being said, I still found that too many people know too little on the subject.

With the idea in mind of raising money, I saw that many of the organizations allowed people to donate money to them so they can get blankets, food, clean water, etc. to the refugees. I decided for my agent of change that I should help with this cause and donate money, as well as attempt to raise awareness of the issue. I decided to do a bake sale in my school, Science Leadership Academy, (SLA) to raise money and awareness. Although I only raised a small sum of fifty dollars for the refugees, I also was able to inform more people about the issue, and hopefully make more people realize that this issue is still going on, and that it is a serious problem, with people dying, and losing their families everyday. Although my Agent of Change was small, I hope that it had some impact on the issue.

The donation screen on the UNHCR website.

I’ve never been a big fan of using hashtags to try and make change happen.

I’ve never even been one to try and make change happen, so I guess my opinion is an outlier that shouldn’t be counted.

Especially since I’m a huge hypocrite when under stress.

In my previous two posts, the talk of cosplay enforced sexual harassment was the focus. In the first post, I mentioned people who were faced with the harassment, and why it’s important to know about. In the second post, I showed results to a survey I sent out to 25 cosplayers, asking them about their experiences.

I’ve mentioned a group called Geeks for CONsent a few times in the past posts, as well. They’re a group of two girls, cosplayers, that have booths set up at conventions and raise awareness about sexual harassment at conventions; such as trying to help place stronger rules against it in Convention rules. They’ve also given people a place to talk about their experiences, and even get help with it; almost like a convention buddy system. No one goes alone.

For my agent of change, I decided to go against myself and use a tag on a social media site called Tumblr.

I had rounded up a group of people and asked them to reblog/repost photos that were posted by cosplayers and tag it with:

Which would eventually link back to a post made describing the project.

(Original post found here)

Out of the people recruited, only a few actually got back to me with their participation.

The following screenshots (along with the links to the original posts with the cosplay featured, not posted directly due to personal rights.) are the few I gathered.

Original posts found here, here, and here.

Original posts found here, here, here and here

Originally, I had planned to do a video. It was to be a public service announcement type thing, where cosplayers sent photos of themselves with signs in cosplay and talked about the things they’ve gone through if they wanted. But, sadly, not many people actually wanted to take part, or just didn’t have the time. So the idea flopped/

However, a few people have given me the permission to use their photos for example. Credit being given where asked, of course. (They’re actually both from the same fandom- how funny is that?)

(http://that-multishipping-choirboy.tumblr.com)

Since starting this project, I’ve grown a lot more involved with this community. This project has changed my outlook on things, and made me realize that people become really good at covering things up about themselves until they’re actually asked about it. It’s also made people feel more comfortable with themselves. By talking about it with someone, they’re willing to face people with confidence, and they’re not afraid anymore. I think I can call this a success.

Moving forward, I think it’d be a good idea to keep this tag going, to try and expand it and make it a normal thing to do.

Make it kind of… a safe word.

There’s still a lot to do with preventing sexual harassment all together, not just at conventions alone, but we’re still fighting for it. And that’s what matters.

This is my second blog post for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Here is the link to the first blog post. My first blog post was mainly about what OCD is, and mentioned a few different kinds of compulsions.

I have created a simple survey to see what people knew and how they felt about OCD. I shared this with people I knew, my advisory, and a friend of mine shared it on facebook. I unfortunately only received 15 responses. Here is a link to my responses. This didn’t leave me much to work with. Out of these 15 people, almost all roughly knew what OCD was. 13%, or two people, out of the test takers had OCD.

I will be making an informational video for OCD awareness. This will be posted on social media sites. At first I was going to do a presentation, but I feel that a video would be more useful, as it could be shown to more people.

Things i could have done better was provide a better explanation. I will have to find and use more information on OCD. I have already found a packet that people can look to for reference.

color organized shelves