Trip to Abbey Kelley Foster Charter School- Reflection

On August 20th I traveled to Worcester with a group of Sturgis students who had volunteered to speak to a class at Abbey Kelly Foster Charter School. This school has decided to adopt the International Baccalaureate program, so it was hoping that we would be able to help its students understand what they would be doing for their Junior and Senior years of high school. When we arrived at the school, we had lunch in the cafeteria with the students who would be participating in the IB program. We introduced ourselves to them then and got to know them a little better. They seemed to be genuinely interested in the IB, and they had plenty of questions to ask us. After lunch, we moved to a lecture hall where we could more formally speak to them about their future education. The subjects of the discussion ranged from basic information about CAS, Internal Assessments and the Extended Essays to what we think about our education so far and what advice we would give to people interested in the program. Some of the advice we gave was to resist putting off work and to keep trying no matter how difficult school becomes. The students and teachers of Abbey Kelly Foster Charter School thanked us for taking the time to come speak to them, and they seemed to be very excited and even a little nervous about what they would be doing next year. I felt that we gave them the best advice we could give, and I think that they should be more prepared for the IB now. I also think that I, along with the other Sturgis students, gained a better understanding of our own education, having described our experiences to others for the first time. Because this was the first time I have done something like this, this activity was a new challenge for me. It was difficult trying to put my feelings about my education into words, but I am glad that I was able to do so, as it was very revealing to myself in addition to being hopefully helpful to the other students. Also, I often do not speak as much as I would like to, so talking to these people felt very helpful towards developing the skill of communicating with large groups of people. I am very glad that I went on this trip. The people at Abbey Kelly Foster Charter School seemed very nice and I am sure that they will make the most of their IB education.

Global Poverty and Solutions- Solutions Part 1

8/16/09
This week we began to discuss some of the possible solutions to global poverty. Much of this discussion was centered around energy poverty. A lack of accessible energy seems to be the root of almost all other types of poverty. Because of this, figuring out how to connect the world to a clean reliable, and abundant power source should be an important step towards eliminating extreme poverty. Many countries that have only recently been developed seem to want what they see as "the American lifestyle." However, it is important that these countries leapfrog directly into the most modern technology, rather than following the same model that we went through. We also talked about the social effects of oil as a source of energy. These effects seem to be generally negative today, as oil has been fueling petro-dicatorships in some areas and slowing down progression toward more efficient types of energy. I am not sure yet if there is much that I can do as an individual to help end energy poverty, but I am looking forward to learning more about solutions in next week's class.

Global Poverty and Solutions- Millennium Development Goals

8/9/09
Today I learned about the Millennium Development Goals, a set of eight goals established in order to improve conditions in developing countries. These include:

1. Decreasing poverty and hunger
2. Universal primary education
3. Gender equality/empowerment
4. Decreasing child mortality
5. Improving maternal health
6. Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and others
7. Environmental sustainability
8. Global partnership

We also discussed the possibility of a water crisis. There seems to be an increasing scarcity of fresh water in many parts of the world, and this is made worse by various factors, such as the production of many types of food and biofuels, which require a lot of water to make. Many plants that developing countries export require large amounts of water to grow, meaning that they are virtually exporting the water that they need.
Today's class has further increased my awareness of my responsibilities as a person and our responsibilities as a country, informing me of how the world hopes to approach global development and what people can do to help achieve these goals.

Global Poverty and Solutions- Extreme Poverty

8/2/09
This week we identified our current goal as ending extreme poverty, rather than ending poverty altogether. Trying to fight poverty itself is likely to be unsuccessful, but eliminating extreme poverty, in which people live on less than a dollar a day, should help greatly improve the standard quality of life around the world. We also revisited our discussion about misconceptions, concluding that not all of the issues related to poverty can be linked to one thing, such as the type of government that controls a country. For example, one popular thought seems to have been that if a developing country is made into a democracy, poverty in that country will be eliminated. This has proven to be false, as poverty leads to poor governance instead of poor governance leading to poverty. It is also important for developed nations to trust that developing countries are not too corrupt to put money to good use. Now that I have become more aware of misconceptions like these, I realize that it is my responsibility to make sure that I avoid them and keep a more open mind about the state of the world and how it might be able to improve.

Global Poverty and Solutions- Misconceptions

7/26/09
Last week the teacher of the class was not able to be there. Rather than canceling the group's second meeting, we had a substitute who showed us the movie Slumdog Millionaire, which portrays conditions of extreme poverty in India. The film was very interesting and we spent some time discussing it in class this week. After this, we talked about the misconceptions that people often have about developing countries. For example, people might mistakenly believe that developing nations suffer extreme poverty because they are lazy, because of their different cultures. Another misconception is that other countries are growing at our expense. In fact, the entire world is growing, but some areas are not growing as quickly as others. Because of this, the world must work together as a whole in order to improve conditions globally.

Global Poverty and Solutions- Introduction

7/12/09
Today was the first day of this summer's High School Studies Program (HSSP) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. The course that I am taking in this program is called How to Change the World: Global Poverty and Solutions. Every Sunday morning until the end of August, I will be traveling two hours from my home to MIT, where I will meet with a group of students who share an interest in learning about and finding solutions to poverty throughout the world. For our first class, we discussed the basic idea of the course and learned some background information that helped us understand the state the world is in today. Much of this focused on the factors that have separated different regions in history in terms of poverty, as well as what nations have been wealthier in the past and which ones will be wealthier in the future. The class seems to be more based around discussion than around lectures, and we were encouraged to keep up with the news so that we could have more to discuss in the future.
So far I am really enjoying the program, and I believe that it is entirely worth the time and the amount of traveling it takes to get there. I feel like I have already learned much about poverty, and I am looking forward to hearing about some possible solutions to the problem.