Huge victory for Standing Rock protestors as the Dakota pipeline construction halts

By: Cassidy, Colin, Jake, Liam and Michael.

For almost eight months, people have been protesting the Dakota pipeline at the Standing Rock reservation, protestors were attacked by dogs, maced,sprayed with water cannons and shot with bean bags and rubber bullets. Many protesters have been arrested including actress Shailene Woodley on October 10th and 140 protesters on October 27th. On Sunday, December 4th 2016 Moria Kelley, who is a spokeswoman for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said that the federal agency will not grant the permit for the Dakota pipeline to be built on its current route, going under the Missouri river. The decision was made because the army agreed that there is “a need to explore alternate routes” that do not pass through the Standing Rock reservation. The protesters celebrate their win but keep in mind that the decision could be appealed, especially with the president elect, Donald Trump and his lack of environmental concern. Another concern of the protesters is that the company who wants to run the pipeline (The Bakken Holdings Company) is very wealthy and may decide that the daily fines that they have to pay will be worth the profit and continue the construction, because of these concerns, some protesters have decided to stay put and make sure that things continue down the path of stopping the project.

Photo referance: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37863955

Healthy Living - Roundup

Written by: Gavin, Tim, Jo, and Steven

This is the last blog post from the Healthy Living group, and after a couple months of working on this project, I can say that we are glad it’s done. Now that isn’t because of the stress, which there was a lot of, but more because we can finally donate the money we’ve raised and potentially help a child in need. With that out of the way, here is everything that happened from the beginning.

• Starting out we were 5, with plans for a schoolyard style game.
• Deciding on capture the flag, we got the go ahead from the principal for the game.
• After a few failed weeks of planning and marketing we only ended up with one person signing up.
• After apologizing to Mr. Robertson for wasting his gym time, we went back to the drawing board.
• This time we decided on a Staff vs Student basketball game
• Cue 2 or 3 weeks of planning and advertising over the announcements, word of mouth, and posters around the school.
• The day of the Global Goal Fair arrives, which went well in its own right.
• Sold over 270 tickets by the last official numbers.
• The game went great with the Teachers taking the win.
• Raised ~$608 that will be donated to the Shriners Hospital for Children in Montreal.

While it wasn’t the most spectacularly planned project, nor did it gain the most awareness, there was a lot of effort that went into the basketball game and we are very glad that it turned out as well as it did.

Thank you to all the wonderful teachers and students that signed up to play, and all those that came out to the game and we hope that you know that your money is getting put to good use.

We do have to also call out Ms. Mcleod for pushing us to make hard decisions when they were needed. She pushed us to recoup our losses when things went south and to not resign ourselves to small scale plans. Without her this simply would not have been possible, so once again, we sincerely thank you.

Origami and the Global Goals Fair!

By Lorin and David

Last Friday, we participated in our schools Global Goals Fair, and it was a huge success! Hundreds of people came to the fair, and we had so much fun!

At our table, we worked together to make origami sea creatures with all of the fair’s participants, and we discussed ocean-related issues, such as oil spills, and extinctions, and how to fix them.

I gave out fliers to people, so that they would always know what they could do to be a positive influence on our marine ecosystems. We also asked people to tweet us pictures of their origami! Here are a couple of our favourites:

Thank you to everyone who came to the fair! We hope that you will all take this to heart, and continue to protect our oceans. If all of us work together to make a change, we can make a huge difference! Stay tuned for more updates about problems related to marine biodiversity, and how you can make a change yourself!

Global Goals Fair a Success!

Blogged by Vanessa, Mackenzie, Tristin and Sam

Our World Issues class’ UN Global Goals fair took place last Friday, and was a huge success! Every group participated, with most having set up booths around the front foyer and displaying informational posters, brochures, and other things to help attract our guests to their booths.

Many groups sold food and held games to raise funds for various charities and organizations (ourselves included); others did things like holding petitions, and one held a school-wide staff vs. student basketball game, which was very popular and raised plenty of funds.

The Tree Musketeers had a booth set up with several baked goods; we baked our own banana and zucchini bread, and our hospitality teacher, Mr. Ford, very generously donated cookies for us to sell as well! On top of this, we also had a game called Garbage Pong, where students could play if they made a donation.

We decided to combine the proceeds from this event with the earnings from our collaborative bake sale, and donate them to one organization rather than two. After raising upwards of $100 from the bake sale and Global Goals fair, we are going to donate these proceeds to the Canadian Wildlife Federation.

A huge thank-you goes out to everyone who helped make our fair a possibility!

H2Woah Did the Fair and Did it Well

Blogged by: Andrea, Kerstyn, Melanie, & Katlin

On Thursday December 9th our World Issues class hosted the Global Goals fair during period 4 (flip week). Hundreds of students and staff came through our fair and visited each booth we had to present. Our group took 3 tables to set up our booth. One table was for popcorn, one for our bristol board of information and petition to ban plastic water bottles, and one table for our water game and candy.

We learned that a lot of people share the same passion as us to ban plastic water bottles, who all signed the petition. This makes it easier to approach our principal to ban plastic water bottles because it’s not just us wanting to make this change but majority of the school too. The only little thing that did not work so well during the fair was the water game. Simply we did not prepare for the hundreds of students and lots of them wanted to play the game (which was good but overwhelming). So lots kids just started picking up the cups of water and drinking them before letting us explain and trying to comprehend with their answers. What could’ve been done was to better prepare the game and have more people hosting the game so that the table would not be bombarded.

After our Global Goals Fair, the healthy living group hosted their student vs. staff basketball game which was a success for them. Hundreds of students also showed up for the game and were so into it that it is said that it will be tradition to host a student vs. staff basketball game now at NPSS. The game ended with the teachers winning, which was a shock because students had a bigger team and were doing really well in the beginning.

UPDATE:

The Gender Artquality Art Show!

Blogged by: Emma and Sarai

YOUTH FOR EQUALITY

Youth For Equality, as mentioned before, is having an art show! We have further established what we plan to do and have finalized our plans since our last blog on our art show.

After speaking with our Art Teacher, Mr. Baker, we were able to book our school’s art gallery on the second floor for Tuesday, December 20th. We have left sign-up sheets in the library, Ms. McLeod’s and Mr. Baker’s rooms. We made it so that any artwork may be anonymous but students must sign up by the latest of December 19th. The show will take place during lunch on the 20th from 10:50-11:40 and it will be open for the whole school to walk through and take a look at the beautiful art that we hope to display.

We came up with the idea to host an art show because we really wanted to raise awareness for our goal of Gender Equality, hence the name of our show: “Gender Artquality.” Both of us love art as it gives people a chance to express themselves in a positive manner. We felt that doing an art show would raise awareness for Gender Equality through our fellow peers sharing their art, creating a public and expressive way to bring forth our Global Goal. With a theme of equality and empowerment, students are able to submit new or old artwork for the show - male or female - that ranges from gender equality to female empowerment. We are looking forward to a great show that will display our ultimate goal in a gorgeous and positive way!

Global Goals Fair Wrap Up!

Blogged By Emma and Sarai

Friday December 9th was the day of the Global Goals Fair. Overall it was a huge success with a lot of classes turning up. Originally we thought it would be a quieter event and was worried our Gender Equality booth wouldn't get a lot of traffic, but we were pleasantly surprised. Our question wheel grabbed a lot of attention from people passing by so we had lots of participation and chances to educate others on some important issues such as women's rights in different countries, female genital mutilation, and the wage gap. People who came to our booth were most surprised by one fact specifically, that is “Women in Russia are barred from 456 employment options”. Sarai and I are very pleased with the Global Goals fair and would like to thank everyone who came and congratulate all of the other groups on their amazing booth!

How You Can Help!

By: Vanessa, Mackenzie, Tristin and Sam

As we are mainly working within our school community to help raise awareness, we thought it would be a good idea to let people know that they can help life on land from home. As we all know, life on land is directly affected by how the environment is treated and how it’s health is; this is where we can come in and make a change.

All people create an ecological footprint. This footprint is based on many aspects of how one person individually affects the world. It can be enlarged or diminished by many aspects ranging from how much a person drives to if your family encourages donating and hand-me-downs.

Here are small things you can do to help:

• Try placing a brick in the back of your toilet bowl so you use less water, or install a “half flush” mechanism
• Use reusable fabric bags when going to the grocery store
• Instead of taking two trips to town, take one and use half the gas. If you really want to amp it up, use public transportation!
• Don’t throw away your leftovers! Donate to a local soup kitchen immediately
• Do NOT underestimate a compost bins potential
• You can also reduce packaging by buying at local markets or buying in bulk
• Embrace DIY natural products like shampoos and moisturizer to minimize plastic usage
• Consider buying already recycled paper
• Don’t be afraid to try new products that are animal and environmentally friendly like lush or the body shop
• Keep your thermostat cool when you know you’re not going to be home and heat it up when you will be
• Electronics CAN be recycled from batteries to your dinosaur of a laptop; it all goes!
• Don’t forget the basics you already know, turn the tap off when brushing your teeth, turn off the lights when you don’t need them, unplug easy access items to use less power, don’t litter
• Not all gardens have to be extravagant, get a large pot and put it on your apartment terrace. Grow your own herbs
• Wash in cold water. Dishes and laundry don’t need hot water when they have disinfectants! If you’re feeling risky even challenge yourself to turn the water to cool in the shower when shaving.
• Use your coffee grinds and egg shells for a homemade compost for your garden

Climate change Water bottle flip

Blogged by: Michael, Jake, Colin, Liam, Cassidy  

                                                      Vox.com

For the fair, to represent our global goal we decided to create a game that uses a trend that’s happening right now, but also implements ideas of climate change. The idea of the game is to throw a water bottle into the air, do a 360, and land perfectly on the bottom. This it is usually performed. For the fair, to make it a bit more related to climate change, we decided to add a twist. There will be three water bottles. One bottle will be filled a third of the way,  the next half filled and the last one will be fully filled. The idea is, when icebergs melt, the water level of oceans will rise. As the water bottles are filled with more and more water, the game gets more difficult. We hope that it is a success and you enjoy our game.

                                                     Vox.com

The Boxes Have Been Wrapped!

By: Emma, Sydney & Megan.

Finally, we have gotten our donation boxes wrapped up and put them downstairs in our front foyer right by the library doors! There will be a couple signs and arrows pointing to where the boxes are located, there is two large boxes right now and we will be putting a few more either down there or we will place them in classrooms! If the boxes do get full feel free to set your donations beside the boxes, on that note try and keep the clothing in a plastic bag and if it is a big donation use a garbage bag so it is easier to collect and doesn’t get dirty! As well as we definitely do encourage that you wash the clothing before you donate them!! But all and all BRING YOUR USED CLOTHING!!!

Photo Reference : http://jbmthinks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/christmas-gifts.jpg

H2woah Presenting to Minors

Blogged by: Andrea, Kerstyn, Katlin, & Melanie

On Thursday, December 2 H2woah got to visit Ms. Mcleods grade 9 period one and two class to present our informational powerpoint and activities to the students on clean water and sanitation. All four of us presented to the period one class, but Katlin had to leave us to go do a math test during the period two class. Both classes were a success presenting, with just minor incidents of little chatter and unwanted cellular work.

Our first activity we played was to match the fact, where we give a water or sanitation statement ex. Each day, nearly ____ children die due to preventable water and sanitation-related diarrhoeal diseases (Ans 1,000). Along with the statement the students would choose with number would go with it. This activity help challenged the students to make predictions of what actually happens in the world with these informational stats, as seen in the pictures left and right.

The second activity was more of a discussion type of water we use in our everyday lives. We asked the students to tell us how you use water in your everyday lives then to say what category it would belong in (self, home, food and farms, community, and global). Followed up with this activity was a short video we showed about water we use in everyday life which is in everything.

The last activity we set was a water test on tap, bottled, and filtered water (see left pic). We asked three students to volunteer their taste buds and bladders to drink each of numbered cups to come up with which cup is tap, bottled, and filtered. This forces students to put their senses to test and actually taste the difference between the three. No student guessed all three correctly.

At the end of our presentation, we could tell that some students really learned about our global goal and the importance of clean water and sanitation. We hope that the students present for our presentation, really took it to heart and will make active changes on conserving water in their everyday lives and pass on the message to others. #BanTheBottle

What’s Next for the Tree Musketeers

Blogged by Vanessa, Tristin, Mackenzie and Sam

With our collaborative bake sale completed and the Global Goals fair fast approaching, the Tree Musketeers are rushing to complete all steps necessary to succeed in spreading awareness on our issue, as well as raising funds at the class fair.

On top of preparing for the fair, we are also making progress with organizing Green Week, where we will challenge fellow Timberwolves to take action on preserving the environment by simply making small changes to their everyday routines. As a group, we have been creating posters, begun writing announcements, and putting final touches on the tasks we will be asking homeroom classes to do.

The point of our Green Week project is to help not only educate our peers on what they can do for the life on land and how easy it can be, but also to make our school a more environmentally conscious community.

image from: http://www.globalgoals.org/

Running Movember!

Blogged by: Emma and Sarai

YOUTH FOR EQUALITY

Movember is a month-long event where men grow moustaches in support of men battling prostate cancer and depression. At our school, Youth For Equality was in charge of running the event because we were interested in raising awareness for prostate cancer and depression in men. It is proven that breast cancer in women is far more researched and funded than prostate cancer in men despite both cancers being leading causes of death among men and women. One in seven men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer and most men do not know what prostate cancer is and how to get tested whereas women know exactly what breast cancer is as there are thousands of foundations supporting the cause. We see pink ribbons for breast cancer all the time but Youth for Equality could not name a single foundation that supports prostate cancer and that is when we decided to run Movember.

We started with the help of our World Issues teacher Miss McLeod. We told her that we wanted to run Movember and she jumped right on it, sending the email we came up with to male teachers about the cause. After several great responses, we set up a booth on the first and second of November with a little moustache sign and some moustache glasses. We got students and teachers to take pictures with out themed items and we were off to a start! Throughout the month we encouraged staff and students to support the cause and to grow moustaches and we took to Twitter to raise awareness. On the last 2 days of November, we went around the school taking “after” photos of male staff that grew a moustache and other staff and students who supported the cause. We did feel that we could have tweeted a bit more about the cause but by the end of the month, we had a bunch of staff and a few students who grew out some tremendous moustaches.

All in all, running Movember was a great experience and we were glad to raise awareness for the cause. Below are some T-Wolves showing school spirit and support men fighting depression and prostate cancer!

Our Art Show

Blogged by: Emma and Sarai

YOUTH FOR EQUALITY

Youth for Equality is trying our absolute hardest to create more awareness for equality in creative way. Well, what is more creative than stunning art? We have taken an artistic approach to spreading awareness and have decided to create an art show for our school and potentially the public! We came up with this idea in hopes that the art show would act as a visual for our global goal of achieving gender equality. Although we have yet to set a solid date, we have been planning our art show and creating posters to put up around the school. Our main theme is equality and we are going to utilize our school art gallery on the second floor to showcase art that is relevant to said topic. By creating sign-up sheets and leaving  them around the school for students to sign up, we hope to  recruit fellow peers who are willing to showcase any gender based or equality based art. Whether the art is old or new, any art is welcome to contribute and may be anonymous. Aiming for a gorgeous aesthetic that gets our goal of equality across, Youth For Equality is quite excited to have fellow staff and students join us for a great art show.

Image from:

http://www.deviantart.com/morelikethis/454239105

Maybe America Still has hope

Blogged By: Liam, Colin, Michael, Cassidy & Jake

Bloomberg says cities will fight climate change with or without trump

Donald Trump said Climate Change is a hoax that was created by the Chinese to get the United States to suppress its manufacturing sector, but on his interview with the New York Times he seemed to back away from his original stance saying that there is “some connectivity” between human activity and climate change. But whether he actually will support climate change when he gets sworn in as president in January is a whole different story. Officials from China, whom have passed the United States in greenhouse gasses released  this year, said that they will continue to help stop climate change with or without the United States if that's what it comes to. Micheal R. Bloomberg, the media tycoon and former mayor of New York City, said that American cities would continue to enact climate policies regardless of what Trump and the federal government decide to do, and urge the mayors of the 128 cities in the United States who see the need to fight climate change to join the agreement.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/us/politics/mike-bloomberg-donald-trump-climate-change.html?_r=0

Busy, Busy, Busy

By: Cassidy, Colin, Jake, Liam and Michael

This past week we have been focusing a lot on our documentary, we have finished up our script and started getting some videos and pictures for the monologues at the beginning and end of the movie. We have questions and facts for the film, http://hanover.groupfusion.net/modules/cms/pages.phtml?pageid=331400         we are hoping to keep it pretty light-hearted but real. Other things that we have been doing in the past couple of weeks include working on our missing and murdered indigenous women map, listening to the podcast by cbc about Alberta William’s murder, creating brochures and games about our goal for the global goals fair, and finishing our educational aspect of the project, the slide show. As you can tell, we have been very busy but we are coming along great and cannot wait to share the results of all of our projects with you in upcoming blog posts.

It’s Time We Give Back!

Blogged by: Megan, Sydney and Emma

Our goal over the next couple of days ito address to everyone in the school that we are having a clothing drive for families and people in need. As a group we believe that everyone should have warm clothes for the winter season so we are going to have this drive and donate everything that we collect to those who are need in our community! Clothing is a huge part in this season because Canadian winters are definitely not warm and we all know it, so it is greatly appreciated and encouraged that we get just as much clothing as toys. If you don’t know what kind of clothes to give here is some examples, mittens, sweaters, socks, hats, scarves, earmuffs anything comfy and WARM!! There will be announcements made in the morning to let people know the deadline of the drive, as well we are deciding whether or not to come around to classroom to classroom with boxes to put everything in and collect it or just have boxes in the front foyer for everyone to put everything into! More details to come, keep your ears open!!

Photo reference: http://www.dpcdsb.org/NR/rdonlyres/24F302BF-54A2-4E00-BDF3-23337133D705/62636/CausesoftheGreatDepression.doc