When One Door Closes, Another Opens!

By Kyla, Mady, Sarah, Ethan and Hunter

Today marks our last day of our Global Goals project, and it’s very bitter sweet! Although we’ve done some fantastic things, our group has experienced our fair share of bumps in the road. There are ways that we could have reached our goals differently, but we wouldn’t think to change one minute of it.

One of our speed bumps was staying motivated during the process. This is by far one of the longest and most in depth projects many of us have ever had, so we found ourselves running out of steam quite quickly. We had to change our mindset as far as projects were concern; most are a sprint, but Global Goals was a marathon. Another struggle may have been the amount of outside-the-box thinking that was needed for this project. Many of our group members are university level students, so not necessarily having a set rubric to follow really pushed us outside of our comfort zone. Despite our challenges, we feel that a lot of us rose to the occasion.

Considering the amount of challenges we faced, our group accomplished a lot! We successfully gathered first aid supplies to send to Nicaragua, sold mental health bags to educate our school, and even ran a social media contest to encourage staff and students at Npss to get active!

The cherry on top, however, was the Global Goals Fair. It was fantastic to see so many playing our game and being excited to receive healthy prizes such as fruit or sunflower seeds. Looking back on our accomplishments, all we feel is pride.

In conclusion, although we had some challenges, Global Goals was a great learning experience. Many of us learned more about event planning, time management, and had some fun too! We encourage other schools and classes to use Project based learning in their curriculum, because you learn about yourself as well as your topic.

Thank You To Everyone!  

Blogged by Brandon, Ian, Mackenzie, Matt

Final Day

Today is officially the last day of global goals No Poverty! We would like to thank everyone who has been reading our blogs, as well as staying up to date with our twitter! We would like to give a special thanks to those who have been impacted by are blogs, and twitter and promoted change. Such as donating toys, and spreading awareness! Our goal is the United Nations goal number one for a reason! Poverty needs to be continued to be tackled daily.

Video Released!

Our video is officially done and is uploaded! Stay tuned on our twitter for the link @npssendpoverty.  The video title is Global Goals #1-No Poverty. Are video aims to raise awareness for poverty, as well as educate on one of the many centres that helps with poverty, within our community. We encourage you to share this video! As well as watch it in order to raise awareness for poverty!

Time For The Holidays

Today a member of our group No Poverty, drove to the Christmas Cheer wearhouse in Barrie. unloading all of the toys that everyone had donated, within the school of Nottawasaga Pines! As well as all donations given to the Christmas Cheer foundation. The foundation aims to give parents gifts to give to their children that they can not necessarily afford. Not just anyone can walk in and get gifts. Investigation of the parent’s/guardian background is done. 7 mandatory interviews are also required to ensure these toys are going to a worthy cause. This is a great cause everyone should contribute too. We would like to thank everyone once again who donated to the toy drive!

Wo(men) Sports

By: Kenz & Meg

Although gender equality has come a long way, even with UNESCO recognizing sports and physical activity as a human right in 1978, it still hasn’t come far enough. In America 40% of the people in sports are women, however only 6-8% of the total sports media coverage is devoted to them. And women-only sports stories add up to just 3.5% of all sports stories in the four major US newspapers. According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, male athletes get $179 million more in athletic scholarships each year than females do. Additionally, collegiate institutions spend just 24% of their athletic operating budgets on female sports, as well as just 16% of recruiting budgets and 33% of scholarship budgets on female athletes. Over the years the popularity of women’s sports has grown, unfortunately the media coverage and sponsorship dollars haven’t followed through and gender equality remains an issue. For example, last July’s Women’s World Cup soccer finale was the most watched soccer match. For men and women. In the US nearly 25.4 million viewers were watching these strong women. Yet the players were far less paid than their male peers.  There are 2 million more men than women taking part in sport at least once per week.  0.4% of the total commercial investment in sport goes into women’s sport. Coaches in women’s team sports at college level earn 63 cents for every dollar earned by head Coaches of men’s teams.

What it boils down to is that we, collectively, men and women, need to do more about gender equality. We need to pave the way for our daughters, just as we do our sons. There should be no inequality in sports, in the workplace, or in life. Women and men should be seen as, and treated as, equals in all respects. Gender should not be the thing that defines us or separates us from our fellow athletes.

References

http://athleteassessments.com/gender-equality-debate/

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/8gvwvv/why-women-will-never-beat-men-in-sports

Olden Time Gender Equality

By. Meg & Kenz

In times of kings and queens the King was always seen as higher than the Queen. In today’s society we do not have a King, just the Queen of England. It is thought that this is a positive thing because it shows how powerful a woman can be when they have to stand on their own.  It is also thought that after the Queen passes and her eldest son Charles takes over, him and his wife Camilla will be seen as equal. This is a very positive action because it shows the world that we can be equal and men are no higher than women and vise versa. This is not the first time that we have only had a Queen.  

Our group is very proud that our Queen is seen as a very powerful woman and that she is a prime example of this. A lot of woman look up to her as a role model and a lot of women strive to be as powerful as her.

References

Queen Elizabeth II. (2017, November 13). Retrieved from https://www.biography.com/people/queen-elizabeth-ii-9286165

Its okay to be single

By: Kenz & Meg

The Office of National Statistics in the United Kingdom found in June that 25 percent of men ages 65 to 69 are getting married, while 21 percent of women of the same age are getting married, The Express reported. This age group had the largest increase in married couples among both genders.  "It's interesting that the largest percentage increase in the number of marriages was for older couples, also that the trend for marrying later in life continues to go up," said Marilyn Stowe from Stowe Family Law to The Express. "The cost of living means that couples need to save for longer and therefore as the country emerges out of recession I would expect the total number of marriages will increase again next year." New York Magazine published a chart that looked at how many women and men are married by the time they're 30 years old. The chart asked "how normal is it" for each gender if they're not married by ages 20, 25, 30, 35 and 40. For women, the normality of not being married by age 40 is at 84 percent, while for men it's at 78 percent. At 35, it's 78 percent normal for women not to be married and 71 percent for men. Women also lead men for normality of not being married by ages 30, 25 and 20, the chart showed. In a study released this past Friday, Demographic Research found that women are more likely than men to sidestep marriage when their student debt level is high. Spencer from New York Times said , “Specifically, an increase of $1,000 in student loan debt is associated with a reduction in the odds of first marriage by 2 percent a month among female bachelor degree/ recipients during the first four years after college graduation,".  So basically, student debt only causes women to avoid marriage at first. But eventually things equal out between men and women, the study found.

References :

https://familyshare.com/26286/10-ways-marriage-is-different-for-men-and-women

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/schlepping-through-heartbreak/201406/woman-s-marriageman-s-marriage-two-different-worlds

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/justice-schanfarber/why-women-leave-men-they-_b_8511584.html

The Girl Who Starved To Death

By Dylan, Molly, Maddy and Mickayla

In the village of Karimati Basti, where hunger and poverty are extremely high, in fact there have been 4 awareness documentaries made involving this village by Warles Surin. But as you can see in the picture above, a young girl died of starvation. She was only 11 years old that died september 17, 2017. The story is only making headlines now as it was only a rumour outside of the village till now and people tried to hide the truth saying it was just illness or blame the parents for neglecting their child, but the truth is it was starvation, plain and simple.This is terrible news especially since according to statistics we produce enough food to feed everyone in the world but we decide to waste a full ⅔ of it! We must start to be more thoughtful about what we throw away knowing if we could learn to spare and share, hunger would not be a problem anymore.

Works Cited

Mayberry, Jessica. “One Death, Three Stories About Sickness and Starvation in Jharkhand.” The Wire, 18 Nov. 2017, thewire.in/197238/jharkhand-starvation-death-media-politics/.

Fairness at the Global Goals Fair

Blogged by Zaheela, Kenz, Rachel, Meg, Ayden

Our global goals fair was a huge success! It's was such a great opportunity for our class to educate our school about some of the UN Global goals. We had the chance to educate our peers about gender equality which is Global Goal 5. Gender Equality affects people all over the world regardless of their status and affects people of all genders. We were very motivated to create change as others that visited our booth were very eager to learn and help. We personally believe that the fair gave our group a great chance to raise awareness. We got many questions and alot of support which we are extremely grateful for. It made our group very happy that we were able to help create change for Gender Equality and take actions to solve this issue.

We had a lot of fun cheering and encourage people to come to our booth. We were happy to see the hype and excitement.

Buttons

We sold buttons that we had made in order to rise money for the women's shelter. We personally believe that selling these buttons was the most challenging part of the fair. We were pleased to see that people believed that what we choose to put on our buttons were very meaningful.

Trivia Game

Our booth also included a trivia game. Students enjoyed playing our game. They liked how our questions were challenging and it gave them the opportunity to learn more about Gender Equality in a method that they found fun and interesting. People believed that our questions were challenging, but the purpose of this was to educate our peers and challenge them to learn more about this issue.

Global Goals Project Comes to an End

Blogged By: Ethan, Nicholas and Carter

December 15, 2017

After working on the global goals project since the beginning of November it is time for our project to come to an end. Throughout working on this project we (group 16) have learned many things about the UN global goals from our fellow classmates and our own research. It has been an excellent learning experience which has helped us gain a better understanding of the world and many of the issues and problems that happen globally. During our time working on this project we have created a survey to educate and compare ideas with fellow peers then we posted the results around the school, we also participated in the global goals fair where we educated other students on our goal. Finally we have been working on a prezi to help educate people on the internet about our goal. Stay tuned to our Twitter (@UN_JNP) where our prezi will soon be posted. All in all our time working on this project has been very positive and we are glad to have worked on it.    

Are Gender Stereotypes Finally Coming to an End?

Blogged by: Zaheela, Kenz, Rachel, Meg, Ayden

Many people all over the world have seen some form of gender inequality. Stereotypical gender roles have defined what a person is known and expected to do and act by the cultural norms of society. Women are recognized as the ones to stay at home to cook and clean along with taking care of the family, while the men were expected as the ones working and earning money. Due to this false expectation, women lose the opportunity to get educated and reach their full potential and men live in the pressure to support their families. The gender roles portrayed by society are continuously being changed. Also, the traditional views of gender roles have significantly been changed as time has gone by. As time has progressed it can be agreed the these stereotypes are gradually going away which means that gender equality has improved throughout the years. Although gender equality is getting better throughout the years there is no doubt that people still have a method of values of what classify something to be masculine and feminine and this often can create barriers between the two genders. Instead of living up to stereotypes people should pursue their dreams. Gender roles do define what not a human being is capable of doing. People all over the world have had instances where they have not received jobs due to their gender which is not a valid reason. We need together to end gender inequality.

References

Image 1:

Ziesel, L., About Laura ZieselLaura recently moved to the East Coast after earning her MA in Theological Studies at Azusa Pacific University. Prior to the move she was the West Coast Regional Director for the Veritas Forum. She is married to Joshua and they have two beautiful children., Says, Z., Says, C. J., Says, D. T., Says, L., . . . Says, S. (2016, August 04). Gender Stereotypes: We Can Do Better. Retrieved from http://juniaproject.com/gender-stereotypes-we-can-do-better/

Image 2:

Gender Equality Archives. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.microsoft.com/empowering-countries/en-us/gender-equality/

Information:

Mira_k, W. N. (n.d.). Gender Equality. Retrieved from http://www.teenink.com/opinion/discrimination/article/855337/Gender-Equality/

Recapping Our Journey!

                                         Cory, Jordan and Chris

This whole journey has been absolutely amazing, we’ve learned so much that has really had an impact on our lives and makes us look at things from a whole new perspective. We started off this project not knowing anything about what's really happening around Canada in concerns to water filtration. Now we know that even though it seems Canada has perfect water sanitization, we don't. We now know 400 out of 618 First Nations in the province had some kind of water problem between 2004 and 2014 (Levasseur,J). We began this project by researching about Indigenous reserves and how the water they have is very unsanitary and dangerous. We learned about these things called boiling water bans, basically what it is, is that the water you have to drink is too unsafe so you have to boil it to use it. We thought this was so unfair because some of these people are only 3 hours away from us. So we did research and got into contact with a man by the name of Scott Miller and he is the owner of a company called ‘Conscious water’. We emailed scott back and forth throughout this whole project but we couldn't find an Indigenous reserve that was interested in receiving water filters that he was willing to donate. So we had to come up with a new local goal, we figured we could announce facts about our goal every morning. Next in our project we had to think of ways we could raise money for a foundation that donates and helps support global goal #6 and we did. We chose the foundation WaterAid to donate our money to. Next we had to think of ways to raise this money so we chose to sell snowcones!! They were a big success, we raised 280$ that was all donated to WaterAid. The last thing in our big project was to prepare for the global goals fair, we created a poster with loads of information all about out goal. We also had a game for the people who visited our booth to play and they had the chance to win a small prize! We also sold snowcones as that was our last day selling them! We talked to alot of people in the global goals fair. Overall this whole experience has been life changing and we are all hoping we are able to do something like this in the future!

References

(First photo) Levasseur, J. (2015, October 15). Water advisories chronic reality in many First Nations communities. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/bad-water-third-world-conditions-on-first-nations-in-canada-1.3269500

(Second Photo) Rainbow Snow Cone Clipart. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://thetomatos.com/free-clipart-30484/

The End of an Amazing Experience

By. Rebecca, Jared, Aimee and Kennedy

Our goal as a group, has successfully managed to make a change in our local community. With the money made from a bake sale earlier on in the month, we have managed to buy many seeds for edible essa. These seeds will be free to the public in the library. With these seeds, anybody in the community can have fun while growing their own plants, while also eating healthy. We know that members of our local community can use this opportunity to make change in their eating habits while supporting agriculture.

We have also been able to make a change through awareness. In order to make such a huge change in our world, we are going to need a huge support system. In order to do this we first have to inform the public on why our world needs saving and just how fast it needs our help. We have managed to do this through statistics and conservation ideas.

Overall, our group feels very proud that we had the opportunity to make a change in our World Issues class. We have seen the differences our class has made as a whole and feel that we will continue to make positive decisions and take initiatives toward making the world a better place for everyone and everything.

Our final week!

Blogged by: Bethany and Presley

                                             

This week is one of the most importants week so far of this process. It is our last week to our UN global goals project. Every group is working on final touches to their group and making everything perfect.

Even though this project is ending, we are still going to continue to use our twitter page which is @NPSSClimateChange. We want to continue to make the world a better place by educating more people.

We made our video talking about what we have been doing and what Climate Change is. We are going to post it on youtube and hope to get lots of views and some nice comments. Our point of that video was to educate the youth in a simple way, and we added some music to make it more fun to watch.

Just remember:

-Try and walk more

-Carpool

-Turn your lights off more

-Use less energy

-Eat less meat

-Always think about the planet

References

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.google.ca/search?q=climate+change&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjkkfa_w4zYAhVk94MKHeb7DSkQ_AUICigB&biw=1366&bih=621#imgrc=pH20iIijYBX5QM:

The Local Goal

Blogged by: Presley and Bethany

    On Tuesday december 12th, our group went to our old elementary school to give a presentation about climate change. We had been planning this since the beginning of our global goals project in October. This was the local component of our global goals project. We went on our lunch break at 11 and finished just at the end at 11:50. We made a google slides for them talking about our goal, climate change, and teaching them what they can do personally to make a difference.

    It was really  cool to teach 60 kids about something we were really passionate about and share our knowledge with them. When we asked if they knew what climate change was, only one kid out of 60 raised their hand. We’re glad we could educate them about it and make an impact. One of the main aspects of this project was to spread awareness and we think we achieved that by having this opportunity and completing it.

    Our global goals project is due this Friday december 15th, we have been working on this for a long time and we’re excited to finish it, but sad for it to come to an end. We’re currently working on sharing our global goals component to the world by posting it to youtube. Now that we have educated locally, we want to educate globally. We hope people see it and can gain insight from it.

Global Shark Finning

By. Rebecca and Aimee

Shark finning occurs all over the world and has led to the endangerment of many species of sharks including the scalloped hammerhead and the smooth hammerhead. An estimated 100 million sharks are killed just for their fins every year and shark populations have decreased by 90% because of the shark fin trade.

Sharks are typically finned for delicacies including shark fin soup. These types of meals are typically bought in countries such as China and Vietnam. Shark fins attract tourists, and are common meals among locals. Shark fins are amongst the most expensive seafood and bring a lot of money to the fishers. Though economically satisfying, shark finning does nothing to benefit any environmental aspects.

Not only does shark finning negatively affect the shark population, but it is very inhumane. Many times the sharks fins will be discarded, and they will be helplessly released back into the ocean, eventually sinking because they can no longer swim.

Many countries have put a ban on the removal of shark finning, while allowing the hunting of full sharks to continue. Though this is not entirely effective in order to help the shark species as shark populations have sunk so low that they will need years in order to repopulate.

So what can we do to help? We must acknowledge the problem in order to save these species. Many world foundations have taken it upon themselves to put a direct focus on the ban of shark finning. These foundations include…

>Humane Society International

>WildAid

>Sea Shepherd

Overall, we must acknowledge the problem in order to save sharks, and although it's not happening right here in Canada, it doesn't mean are voices or efforts go unnoticed.

References:

Waters, Hannah. “Good-Bye Gillnet, Hello Shark Recovery!” Ocean Portal | Smithsonian, Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, 26 Oct. 2017, ocean.si.edu/ocean-news/good-bye-gillnet-hello-shark-recovery.

Gender Equality Within the Workplace

By: Meg and Kenzie

In the society we live in women are treated a lot different than men. For example for every dollar a male makes a female will only make seventy four cents. A lot of people ask why but the answer is usually “just because”. This does not have to be the case. Every woman should be treated just like a man would. This includes not giving woman special jobs just because they are a girl. Jobs should be equally dispersed upon employees. It is not only managers jobs to be fair when assigning jobs to employees, but the owners job to enforce the rule of being equal. If these issues are brought to the attentions of owners by employees then it is more likely to be changed. Many people think men are stronger than women so in some work places they only focus on hiring men vs. some workplaces only hire women. In today's society it is thought that all workplaces should be co-ed so both genders feel equal and comfortable within their workplace. It is also thought that at some jobs women are smarter than men, but this isn't the case either both men and women’s brains develop differently so it is truly impossible to determine what sex is more intelligent.

References

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.google.ca/search?q=workplace+gender+equality&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwja2fLY14fYAhVL7oMKHXgkA5MQ_AUICygC&biw=1366&bih=662#imgrc=twaqTbrG5eBDbM:

Medical Kit Drive Follow Up

Blogged by Ethan

After two weeks of collecting items we finished our Medical Drive. We gathered a lot of items, with two boxes full of stuff. The stuff will go down to the North-Western Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. The old glasses will be brought to an eye doctor, while the medical supplies will be brought to a public hospital. The Government there does not spend a lot on health care, and the west side is usually under funded, this leads to the poorest region in the country having the least amount of healthcare. We are all very thankful to those that donated, and the people of Nicaragua will be thankful.

The Phone Call Of A Dream

By Chris, Cory and Jordan

In our Global Goal group (Clean Water And Sanitation) we have made some good progress. We called Scott  who is the owner of a water filtration company called  Conscious Water. This company sells things like water filters and sanitation tablets, and Scott has already done work with people to help with their unsanitary water. Scott gave us some different kinds of ideas that we could do if we still had some time after our project is finished, to get students in our school to recognize the problems that people in the world and our own country are facing due to lack of clean water and sanitation. The ideas he gave us were well thought out and we believe the ideas he suggested to us were very good actions to do. We enjoyed having Scotts help through this and him giving us the ideas to expand our actions even further. We hope to speak with him again possibly outside of this class to continue what we have started. At the moment we’re counting all the money we raised. We’ll be sending it to Wateraid. We raised about $275.

Canadian Kids Starving Why..?

By Dylan, Molly, Maddy and Mickayla

According to the UNICEF( United Nations International Children's Emergency Funding), out of the top 41 wealthiest countries, where the HDI(Human Development Index) rates canada the 10th best country in the world, UNICEF reports that Canada ranks 37/41 of these countries for children having enough access to proper nutrition on a daily basis! This is terrible considering how easy this problem would be for Canada to fix! 22% of Canadian children are starving and live in poverty, this number is INCREASING not decreasing. Canada must find a solution as children are the future and we need them to grow up healthy. Hopefully the Canadian government can fix this major problem soon.

Works Cited

Press, The Canadian. “Canada Lags When It Comes to Child Hunger, Violence: UNICEF Ranking.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 15 June 2017, www.cbc.ca/news/health/unicef-child-well-being-1.4161875.