Trevor Hinton

Globalization

4^th quarter benchmark

In and around Philadelphia it isn’t hard to spot a Boys and Girls club or sports group that consist of children from and around the neighborhood enjoying various activities and spending time with mentors and friends. You’ve seen the ads and commercials boasting of the success many famous celebrities actors and actresses have had after being in a Boys and Girls club and the urge they put on children from communities to join and be embraced by the good mentoring programs that they can give to a young person; while many good things and young people come from these programs there is a small group of afterschool programs that don’t get the necessary funding and support that programs like the Boys and Girls club which is a much larger organization receives and the problem arises when you are no longer able to accept children into these programs and their parents still wish to have them doing something proactive after school has been dismissed. A lot of these programs are run out of a child’s school as a way to keep them off the streets but when funding is an issue and program directors can’t get enough of something to keep the program going it can cause the children to lose interest or worse for the whole program to be suspended. There are a lot of things that go into running a afterschool program such as planning of any trips, snacks for the children, planning of activities and any supplies that, something as simple as an afterschool program that allows children to just play sports and hangout with friends for as long as they can so that they are occupied isn’t as hard to manage however when trying to coordinate and plan things outside of sports or arts and crafts it becomes a bigger issue of how to gather everything that is needed in a timely matter so that things can be done properly. My two brothers were in a afterschool program that was run out of there school that taught inner city kids going to public schools how to wrestle and stay off the streets and while the program was a great success and drew many kids in when it came for them to go to different competitions to compete and go to places like the University of Penn to practice because of the lack of funding that was able to be provided from the school a lot of things had to come from willing parents i.e. rides to competitions (sometimes as far as Lehigh), snacks, and in some instances putting down a certain monetary amount so they would be able to rent a bus or van for the day. The bigger question that arises from this is what can be done to keep programs like these running and up if they don’t have the support of a school district or other community programs; if the idea is to keep kids safe and off of the streets getting into things that could harm them shouldn’t more be put on any and everyone involved to have a bigger plan in place to keep things like this open and running as long as possible, what grants can be given what donations can be made to these smaller programs, these are questions that have yet to be given a concrete answer to aid this cause.

• Since my topic is very well-known to many people, it's hard to find an appropriate attitude and explanation I should use for this project. So I looked over many websites and tried to find a objective attitude towards all kinds of comments.
  
  
  
• It's really hard to find the actual truth of the story in Tibet, actually. After I searched all kinds of information, I don't even think that there is a truth exists. Foreign media is always not reporting the truth and exaggerating the mistakes Chinese government had, while Chinese government is always trying to hide something from the people and the media. All I can do is read articles from both sides and to analyze as best as I can. 
  
  
  
• The story actually attracts far more attention than I ever thought, however, the truth is not attracting any focus at all. As if everybody are mislead to different kinds of acknowledgement, the people in China, the foreigners, the media, and even myself. Each side has its own point of view and evidence. Although I can tell parts of it are completely wrong, the rest is still bothering me because all the "truth" are in a conflict. For example, There is no way to identify whether Dalai Lama is involved in the conflict as a man with guilt, nor can I find any evidence to prove his innocence.
  
   
• I think it will. After all the articles I went through, what I see was only one side disagree with another. Either Chinese media and government saying foreign media are all telling lies, or foreign media blaming Chinese government about freedom and human right but never speaking about the improvements. In my article, I tried to combine the two ideas together and try to find some similarities between them. 
  
  
  
• I learned a lot about the ancient history between Tibet and China, and I also learned about the prejudice media have on China-Tibet conflict. What's the most important, I discovered that there might be something with no truth existing at all. What we saw is just a surface. The truth itself might already been covered up by time.

• What did you find most challenging about this project?
  
  The most challenging aspect of this project option did not lie on the photo, but rather figuring out ways to connect the picture with the larger globalization themes.
  
  
• How did you go about collecting the images or selecting the images?
  
  I skim through the collections of photos that I have, as well as wandering around the city with the lens of globalization in mind. Sometimes, I had a very clear vision of the connection between what I see and globalization. However, when it became less relevant and significant once I put it down in writing.
  
  
• Which image is your favorite? Why? Elaborate.
  
  My favorite was the pictures of Italian Market. I like the transformation that the place has witnessed over the years. I really wish I have the picture of the place 10, 20, 30 years ago to compare the change.
  
  
• How prevalent is the evidence of globalization in Philadelphia? Do you think it is more or less so (evident) than in other large cities in the US? Why Why not?
  
  Globalization is conspicuous arguably everywhere now. However, it has a stronger presence in urban than rural, and even more so in larger urban area. In Philadelphia, it is certainly not that hard to find evidences of globalization, as it is the hub of major activities involving multinational interactions. In larger city, such as New York, it is more ubiquitous, as there are more people, and activities.
  
  
• What did you learn?
  
  - That escaping globalization seems to be impossible in Philadelphia.
  - The root of Globalization is strikingly inhuman.
  

Option #1

Since the begging I knew that this brenchmark will be specially challenging because our teacher give us options to select from, which was nice but at the same time scary because each option was hard in a way, wasn’t a safe choice. I chose the uncover story to find a good news in the city and show it because sometimes I feel like the people in Philadelphia underestimate the city and think that everything is bad.

For the reason that is a news article I couldn’t stay set in front of my computer and write a paper, I had to research and find people who will support my story in order to show that is real. Rotary Club is the organization that is sponsoring my exchange program and besides that they do a lot of good community service so was a pleasure for me talk about that fantastic people.