Danger In the French Alps

By.April

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Over the past month, there have been a number of deaths and injuries due to Avalanches in the mountain range. As a popular tourist destination for activities ranging from skiing and snowboarding to mountain climbing, mass amounts of unstable snow, and the use of closed-off trails has caused many accidents so far this season.

The tragedies began when two climbers were caught in an avalanche on January 3rd 2016 near the Mont Blanc range. The climbers, later identified as a man and a woman from Lithuania unfortunately did not survive the accident, and were the first casualties of the season.

Later in the month, on January 13th there were reports of an avalanche on one of the slopes at “Les Deux Alpes” resort that had impacted students on a field trip in the area. Two students, and an adult male died while skiing through a closed section of the Mountain. The area of the collapse had received heavy snowfall in the days prior to the incident, after having little snow activity at the beginning of the season. Two others were injured in the event. The fresh snow had been causing avalanches in the area around the resort, an article in the telegraph states “Shortly before the tragedy in Les Deux Alpes, six skiers were swept away by an avalanche in Avoriaz, 120 miles to the north, but survived. In Tignes, 75 miles to the south of Les Deux Alpes, an adult skier was caught in another avalanche and swept into a lake. The skier survived and was rescued from freezing waters shaken but unharmed.” (Telegraph.co.uk).

Unfortunately the casualties due to avalanches in the French Alps continues as five French Foreign Legionnaires were killed and several others were injured on Monday, January 18th during a training exercise.

As the snows continue to fall, and shift on the mountains, several more avalanches are expected 

from the region this season. Watches and warnings for specific slopes should always be followed and 

kept in mind while enjoying the beautiful but dangerous area.

Wrapping it Up; The Final Blog Post

Blogged By; Poverty 2 Power

What an incredible and eye opening journey this has been, with much learned and many skills developed! Our group has worked so hard to help the United Nations complete their Sustainable Development Goal #1; End Poverty in all of it forms everywhere by 2030.  When our teacher Ms McLeod told us about the global goals project, we were thrilled to start something that would impact our community and world in such a positive way!!  We brainstormed many ideas for both our local and global goals, deciding that we wanted to do something unique to our school and class. The problem with picking poverty as our global goal was that it encompassed almost all of the other 16 goals, including the ones that are classmates were attempting to tackle. With this being the case, we didn't want to have a project similar to another group…

So, we decided to tackle our local action by making our very own documentary! All four of us had never made or edited our own video before, let alone produced an accurate and intriguing documentary! Before we even thought about filming, it was important to get statistics and do some research into poverty within our surrounding community. We visited the Angus Food Bank in late October, and interviewed the head volunteer, who gave us an insight into the needs within our area. We were so shocked to learn that 3,000 people use the Angus food bank every month. Doing some further research into Canadian Food Banks, we noticed that this number was very high for such a small community.  Since Angus is rather small, we decided to branch off, but not go any farther than the Barrie Area for our filming. We spent hours interviewing civilians from all over the Simcoe County area, asking them questions about poverty; what they noticed, ideas for solutions, situations they’ve been in and what poverty is to them. The answers and involvement from everyone was astounding! We worked hard to edit and perfect the documentary, to be shown at our premiere on December 11th! We had more than 100 staff and students show up, as well as special guests from SCDSB! The event was a great success- we talked about our take on poverty, some shocking stats throughout the community and what each student could do to help. When we showed the video, all of the students seemed to be extremely engaged, and they signed our prepared mission statement when they left. This made us feel great, knowing that the students had taken something away from our hard work and agreed to do what they could to end poverty in our local community. As Well, we had raised over $30 for The Red Cross, to help Syrian Refugees in our area and had some donations for us to take to the Angus Food Bank! How amazing!!!  Our favourite quote from our pre-movie discussion was from David Attenborough; “How could I look my grandchildren in the eye, say I knew about this and did nothing”.

In case you missed the premiere, you can view our whole documentary here;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iogkrh8lC14     

As many who have been following our World Issues Global Goals project know, we also needed to complete a global action to support our goal. Poverty is evident all over the world and affects every human's life in either an indirect or direct way… This made it so hard for us to think of a way to tackle our goal. When doing some research, we came across an NGO ‘Canadian Feed The Children’, which was a Canadian charity working both in Canada and in developing countries such as Uganda, Ethiopia and Haiti. We really agreed with the work that they do, as they really focus on “helping families help themselves out of poverty”. We decided to sponsor a village of 4000 people in eastern Ethiopia and to do this, we needed to raise $480. The funds would go directly to supporting programs such as equal schooling, businesses, agriculture and clean water. This seemed like a lot of money to raise in such a short amount of time, but we had a great fundraising idea behind us! We took the time to design our t-shirts, and sold them online for $20-$35, with 89+% of the money going straight towards our cause!! We had such a great response from the community, and we sold 55 T-shirts, making a profit of $500!! The money will be delivered to Canadian Feed The Children headquarters in the new year!! Of course, to make this campaign successful, we needed to have an educational component to it, explaining to people HOW their money will help! When the shirts are delivered in the new year, we will have an information sheet for everyone when they receive the shirt, as well as a hashtag so that each person can show their shirts off to the world of social media, with their reason for supporting the eradication of poverty! There’s so much in store for Poverty 2 Power’s Shirt campaign in the new year!  

Check out our Shirt Campaign here; http://teesforthepeople.com/products/poverty2power-1

Our goal was to educate others on Poverty around the world and in our local community, and we are pleased to announce that we think we have accomplished it!! The moment that was really defining for us, was when students signed the mission statements after our documentary premiere… This meant that they were committed to helping us end poverty, and that our presentation had meant something to them! During the process of our project, we learned a lot about teamwork, collaboration and dedication. Although these are important skills to learn, the most valuable lessons that we learned from this project were as follows;

• Be thankful for what you have…. So many families around the world do not have access to fresh water, let alone christmas presents for their family     
• Poverty is evident in all lives, either in a direct or indirect way… At some point in your life, you HAVE been affected by poverty
• Poverty is not always visible. Families may be silently struggling and it is important to be kind and understanding
• Local food banks and other aids are used a lot more than the average person would think… It is important to give what you can!!

For us, the overall experience was fantastic and unlike anything we had ever experienced in a high school class before. We felt as though we were really making a change and the amount of free reign that Ms McLeod gave us, allowed us to dream as big as we wanted!! At times, the project could seem frustrating, when something detrimental would happen, but as soon as it got back on track, we knew how important it was to complete this project, as it is an issue that we are all deeply passionate about! Throughout the project, we experienced many up’s and downs, as was to be expected with a project this big! We experienced a lot of problems with the shirt company, which could be very frustrating, as we knew that 55 people were counting on us to deliver these shirts.  Editing the documentary took a very long time, which was also something that held us back… But, at the end of the day, we are thrilled that this project was so successful!!

Thanks to everyone who supported us throughout the entire process!!

Photo Credits; Rosalyn, Mrs. Simpson, Canadian Feed The Children and Tee’s for the people

World Issues: Development Goal 15
Our Final Blog Post

By Sam, Brendan, Janson, Matt and Tristan

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The UN development goal number 15 wishes to make life on land healthy and sustainable, they wish to do this by ensuring conservation, restoration and sustainable use of terrestrial and inland freshwater ecosystems. To promote the sustainable management of all forests, stop deforestation and restore degraded forests by reforesting.

The UN wishes to combat; desertification, restore degraded land, conserve mountain ecosystems, protect and prevent extinction of species, end poaching and trafficking of protected species, prevent and reduce the impact of invasive species, integrate ecosystem and biodiversity values, increase financial resources to conserve biodiversity and ecosystems, create financially sustainable forest management and provide incentives to developing countries to advance management or conservation and reforestation and finally to enhance global support.

Our group decided to focus on ending deforestation, we did this by raising awareness on twitter,  we also received donated old furniture and household items and upcycle them. The upcycled furniture and items were sold and all proceeds went to Friends of the Earth Canada foundation. In total our group raised 130$.

During the many months of preparation for our gallery, we learned much and faced some challenges. We learned that the land is something everyone relies on and is the base of of communities everywhere, when 80% of our diet relies on plant life it is essential that life on land is saved and protected.

Some of the challenges that we faced were that as we came closer to the date of our opening gallery we realized that we would not be able to finish all of our items, so we had to move the gallery to the Friday of the same week.

As aground we had a great time making and upcycling the items, it is fun and not very hard. Someone with little to no experience can do it and that is why it is a great way to help the environment and the UN to reach its goals.

Americanization of Cuba

Blogged by: Vincent

Cuba and the United States have had a strained relationship for over 50 years.  The two countries severed ties in 1961 because Fidel Castro began increasing trade with the Soviet Union and increased taxes to American imports. For this the U.S. imposed travel restrictions and a trade embargo on Cuba. So finally after more than 50 years, these restrictions are in preparation to be lifted.  Americans have not been able to tour Cuba freely since 1961, a country that is 90 miles away from them.  With the travel restrictions finally being lifted, what will the presence of Americans in Cuba mean? What benefits for Cuba will there be?

President Barack Obama talks with Cuban President Raul Castro before a bilateral meeting, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2015, at the United Nations headquarters. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) Andrew Harnik / AP

The Cubans are bracing for the increase in tourism and Americans are eager to tour a country that they have been restricted from.  The Cubans are building new hotels, and cruise ship docks in preparation. The Americans want a new Caribbean place to visit. It is expected that Cuba will get 10 million American visitors a year. Cuba has to do many improvements. They need more five star hotels, they need to replace crumbling buildings, they need to improve their transportation system and communication/internet systems. Also the Cubans needs the U.S. dollars to help their economy. With the countries making this agreement, there have been some changes but there are still problems ahead. When making this agreement we have to put in perspective that these are two very close countries have not had the best relationship.

In my opinion the countries are too close to have this law and agree that it should be lifted. Also Americans should be allowed to tour Cuba as just regular tourists but the laws and rules of both countries must be such that neither country can take advantage of the other. This is to keep both countries interests protected, preserve Cuban culture, and allow both countries to have mutual respect for each other.