My book is about an Arab-American from Iraq named Haris who plans to join the Syrian civil war. He was a translator for the Americans in Iraq. He witnessed a lot of horrible things and the mistreatment of other Arabs. After working for the Americans for long enough, he gained enough money to move him and his orphaned sister to the states. When they got there she enrolled in college and found a husband. They planned on moving to Dubai with his family. He felt like he was no longer needed in her life because her husband was rich and he would take her away. They had depended on each other since their parents died. He started talking to a Syrian named Saladin online who convinced him that it was an Arabs duty to help other Arabs in need. Haris flies to Turkey and plans to cross the border. He meets Seid and Athid in a cafe near the border they ask him about his plans and who he’s come with. Athid offers to help him cross the border but leads Haris into a trap where Saied robs him and leaves him with nothing. Said needed the money for surgery because of injuries he’s gotten in the war. Haris is found and taken in by Amir and his wife Daphne. Haris and Daphne fell in love. “ Amir said he loved Daphne and Haris had to stop himself from saying he loved her too.” Daphne works at the hospital and one day while Haris was there he spotted Saied. Saied told him that he was Saladin, the man who tricked him into coming here. Even after learning this Haris still wanted to fight in the war. Daphne wanted to come also to look for the daughter she gave up when she left. They got the money and crossed the border. They disappeared and Amir never heard from them until one day when they gave him their location. “ Spring had arrived early this year, and in front of him the trees in Antep city Park had begun to leaf. He had nowhere to be. So he decided to take a long walk beneath their shade.” The book ends with Amir walking because he had nothing left to do and he was depressed.
This book’s theme is that when your fellow humans are in trouble, you should sacrifice all you have to, to help. This book would help people today to see how much Haris gave up in order to try to help as many people as he could, and learn selflessness. This is valuable today because this is a time where many people are selfish and don’t know how fortunate they are. This book will help open people’s eyes up to see how other people are living and to realize how good they have it. This will also show how far a person will go to help others and make us see that doing a simple favor for someone is a good start.
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So far in my book, Haris has met Amir and Daphne. Daphne works in the hospital and Haris helps her out at the hospital. In the hospital, all the Syrian patients are treated in the sweltering hot basement. They are not treated as well as citizens of Turkey. “ Disconnected from his trickling IV bags, he’d become wholly inanimate, Until his death, his life would be an issue of storage somewhere in the hospital.” This was when a Syrian man was taken off life support and basically killed. He was taking up space and they thought there was a slim chance of him recovering and even if he did his life would be miserable. They threw him into a room with other dead bodies while he was still technically alive.
Today Syrians are generally treated worse than Turkish citizens. Because Turkey is right next to Syria, hundreds of thousands of refugees are currently in Turkey. The Turkish government is doing its best to help the refugees financially but they are running out of funds and it is having an effect on the economy. European countries like Germany are only taking a specific number of refugees a year so Turkey and other neighboring countries are getting a lot. This is one reason why some people from Turkey may dislike Syrians. Also, because of the lack of money, some refugees have to scam or steel from other people to make ends meet. In my book, a refugee named Saied scammed Haris into coming to Syria to help fight. He robbed Harris and left him with nothing because he had to go to the hospital. That was the only way he knew how to make money. My book is about the Syrian civil war. My book takes place during the fighting between the rebels and Assad’s military beside the border between Syria and Turkey. In the book many people die and people who once had large families only have a few relatives. People go hungry in the refugee camps and fight over small coins. The reason why they do this is because they lose everything they have when bombs attack their cities, or militias take over the city. This is happening today in Syria too. An airstrike was just carried out by the United States a few days ago. The country is split between the supporters of Assad and the supporters of the Free Army but more people support the Free Army due to Assad’s harsh rule. The main character in my book, Harris, is a supporter of the free army. He has come all the way from America to help them by joining the war. Another connection made between my book and the war is that countries like the U.S. and Great Britain bomb Syria to help the rebels cause. This disrupts civilian life and when Syrians try to emigrate to other countries like the U.S. and Great Britain, it is very hard. These countries view them as terrorists.
Introduction Do you know what it feels like to be living on the streets, sleeping in an alleyway, and having looks of disgust shot at you? Homelessness is when someone has inadequate housing or living situations, whether it be living on the streets, staying in a shelter or in any other unstable or non-permanent situation. When a person cannot find a job or a way to earn money to afford housing, they are forced into homeless shelters or to live on the streets. About twenty percent of people in the United States of America currently lack adequate housing.(White 1) When someone is homeless they feel that their life is worthless or they are not cared for. Everyone should care about this issue because one day you could find yourself homeless on the streets. How would you feel about people not caring a drop about you? The reason we chose this issue is that we can empathize for all the homeless people, as we have seen the effects of homelessness on the body and mind. When one of our group members visited Africa he saw kids around the age of five to six walking on the streets and wearing rags giving him the evil eye, showing the resentment and jealousy homeless people hold toward those with stable housing and food supply. Homelessness negatively impacts our society as a whole. Those in poverty have more tendency to commit crimes than others. Taxes have to be raised in order to provide more shelter and food. Hunger negatively affects people's ability to work and overall decreases productivity.The ones most affected from this issue are those that are homeless themselves. Their mental health starts to be affected negatively and many start using drugs. Those who are homeless have many troubles that can be fixed with our help. The Issue Did you know that of the 4,000 homeless people in Wake County, 2,736 of them are Wake County students? (Raleigh Rescue Mission 2018) Homelessness is an issue anyone can face. One moment you could be relaxing in your multi-million dollar house, and the next moment you are on the street corner asking passing cars for spare change. Homelessness has always been an issue and it continue if our community does not change. “Socialists also recognize that poverty under capitalism is largely maintained by a skewed distribution of wealth and services, not by lack of a work ethic.” (Duhalde 2013) While our country’s Capitalist government is amazing in some ways, it also has some flaws like harvesting the issue of homelessness. Most people have never heard of invisible homelessness. Invisible homelessness is when a person doesn’t have a stable home and is crashing at a differents friend’s house every night. Almost 1 in 12 Wake County residents have sheltered someone who might otherwise be homeless. (Raleigh Rescue Mission 2018) If the amount of people that are invisibly homeless were counted in the statistics, there would be a lot more homeless people on record. There are many reasons as to why a person would be homeless. A few of those reasons are:
There are many effects homelessness has on people and especially children. Here are some shocking facts:
Homelessness doesn’t just affect the individual people, but also the community. The effects of homelessness on society can be quite costly, not only in terms of tax dollars spent but on the strain it puts on social agencies, individuals and families. Taxpayer’s hard earned money is used to fund shelters, pay for homeless people’s medical bills, and pay to fund jails where a many homeless people sadly end up. According to HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, it would be cheaper to solve the problem of homelessness as opposed to continuing to pay their expenses. The tax dollars could go towards education, infrastructure, and so much more that we could all benefit from. One homeless person costs taxpayers 40,000 dollars a year. (Moorhead 2012). Also, homelessness isn’t a good look for a location trying to attract tourists. Tourism increases jobs and the wealth of an area. Another negative effect of homelessness on the community is crime. A fifth of homeless people have committed imprisonable offences like shoplifting. (Ramesh 2010) When people are put in stressful situations they will do anything they have to to get out of it and survive. If this issue is not taken care of, taxes will continue to go up, crime levels won’t go down, and homelessness’ victims will continue to struggle. The Solution Since homelessness is such a big issue in our community, there are a lot of people desperately looking for ways to help the homeless population. Over time, people who were willing to give have come up with various solutions to lessen the burdens placed upon those without a home to live in. While taking the number of homeless people into account, one issue we can all agree on is that the homeless may have a hard time gaining access to food. A lot of these people do not know when their next meal will come. The Raleigh Rescue Mission in particular, is known for giving meals to those in need. Typically, they’ll serve over 140,000 meals per year. A solution to those going hungry, would be making more food available to those who are in need. The Raleigh Rescue Mission is an organization which helps the homeless throughout the city. They provide meals for those who need it, and have helped plenty of people get back on their feet. They happen to offer a selection of volunteer services, one of which directly helps people who need food. They allow you to help prepare 60-65 meals for their overnight emergency shelter, so that shelter guests will have a source of food available to them once they leave the shelter the following morning. By them doing this, they can provide one more meal that may save a life. We still need to help the homeless, because there are still people who are living in poverty, who cannot find an adequate meal, or shelter to stay. These are basic human rights that should be applied to every human being. What can we do to help? Many homeless people in our community do not know where their next meal is coming from. Those in poverty have trouble maintaining a stable food source. The Urban Ministries in Wake County is a non-profit organization that helps provide shelter, food and medicine for those who are less fortunate. Maintaining a healthy nutrition is important and Urban Ministries has a food pantry that can help those in need. They provide food for struggling families to help get them back on their feet. We have the ability to help those within poverty is by hosting a food drive. With the help of Martin’s students donating food over a couple of weeks we can make a difference by filling the food pantry at Urban Ministries. The food drive will start a week before our day of service. Our goal for this project is to collect 400 boxes and cans of food for those in need. This is a measurable goal that we are able figure out. When students enter the school building they can drop off food in the donation pile either outside the front office or student services. Posters will be needed to advertise the food drive Two of our group members are Martin Ambassadors and we can ask this group to help make the posters. We will ask the assistant principals to remind each grade level during lunch to bring in food donations. Large boxes are needed to collect the food in. The cafeteria stores boxes in the kitchen so we will ask the cafeteria ladies if we are able to use them for our food drive. On the day of service those who signed up will sort the food by category such as, dry goods, canned goods, beverages, sauces and spreads. We will do this at Martin in the cafeteria. This space is empty in the morning so it will be available for our use. Everyone who signed up for this project will help deliver the food to Urban Ministries in a bus. Sammy Hobgood, the volunteer coordinator at Urban Ministries, has communicated with one of our group members and discussed the requirements and availability for this project. One chaperone is needed per five people and there can be a little or as many students for participation. He will be at Urban Ministries to provide guidance during the food drop off. A three week notice is necessary for this project in order to prepare. Urban Ministries welcomes us to host a food drive because every little bit counts. We should help our community as much as we can because you never know when you might need help from your community. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world: indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”-Margaret Mead Bibliography DeRonja, Emily M. “Food Drive for Urban Ministries.” Message to Sammy Hobgood 26 January 2018 DeRonja, Emily M. “Food Drive for Urban Ministries.” Message to Sammy Hobgood 26 January 2018 DeRonja, Emily M. “Group Volunteer for Martin Middle School.” Message to Sammy Hobgood 25 January 2018 Dr. Schwartzbard, Julie ”factors that affect focus and concentration.” Bettermind. January 31. 2018 <https://www.bettermind.com/articles/factors-that-affect-focus-and-concentration/> Duhalde, David. “Capitalism and Poverty: A Socialists Analysis.” Democratic Socialists of America. 2 June 2006. 26 January 2018 <http://www.dsausa.org/capitalism_and_poverty> Hobgood, Sammy M. “Food Drive for Urban Ministries.” Message to Emily DeRonja 26 January 2018 Hobgood, Sammy M. “Food Drive for Urban Ministries.” Message to Emily DeRonja 26 January 2018 Hobgood, Sammy M. “Food Drive for Urban Ministries.” Message to Emily DeRonja 26 January 2018 “Homelessness.” Raleigh Rescue Mission. 2018. 28 January 2018 <http://www.raleighrescue.org/homelessness/> “How Many People with Serious Mental Illness Are Homeless.” Treatment Advocacy Center. 25 July 2014. 1 January 2018 <http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/fixing-the-system/features-and-news/2596-how-many-people-with-serious-mental-illness-are-homeless> “Impact of homelessness.” Homeless Link. 2018. 24 January 2018. Moorhead, Molly. “HUD secretary says a homeless person costs taxpayers $40,000 a year.” Politifact. 12 March 2012. 26 January 2018 <http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/mar/12/shaun-donovan/hud-secretary-says-homeless-person-costs-taxpayers/> Randeep, Ramesh. “A fifth of all homeless people have commited a crime to get off the streets.” The Guardian. 22 December 2010. 28 January 2018 <https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/dec/23/homeless-committing-crimes-for-shelter> Thoeni,Katherine“Homelessness in our community affects us all” Unitedwaymcca. January 31. 2018. <http://www.unitedwaymcca.org/homelessness-our-community-affects-us-all> “Volunteer.” Raleigh Rescue Mission. 2018. 25 January 2018 <http://www.raleighrescue.org/get-involved/volunteer/> “What is the official definition of homelessness.” Nhchc.. January 31. 2018. <https://www.nhchc.org/faq/official-definition-homelessness/> “Why Are People Homeless?.” Salvation Army. 2017. 24 January 2018. <http://www.salvationarmy.org.au/en/Who-We-Are/our-work/Homelessness/Why-are-people-homeless/>Gillian B. White”rural america’s silent housing crisis”theatlantic.com January 31. 2018 <https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/rural-americas-silent-housing-crisis/384885/> One issue in our community is the growing number of people contracting sexually transmitted diseases. Raleigh scored poorly on cities with high STD rates. This topic interests me because I think people should be more educated about this including myself. In North Carolina, there are an estimated 36,800 people with an STD and approximately 3,400 of them are unaware of their infection according to ABC 11 Eyewitness News. I believe this number will only grow if we don’t do something about it. This issue affects everyone in the community and they should care about this because as long as people continue to engage in sexual activity without knowing their ability to contract a disease or infection, the number of people with an STD will grow.
What we as a community can do, is raise money to help schools near us provide non-abstinence until marriage only sex education. Also, schools can provide free contraceptives to their students. The Department of Public Instruction and community-based organizations in North Carolina received $2,223,963 in federal funds for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs according to ncsse.com. This proves that raising funds to influence our school’s curriculum is possible. According to Kathrin F. Stranger-Hall writing for plos.org, the U.S. teen pregnancy and STD rate is substantially higher than seen in other developed countries because of our ineffective abstinence only sex education. I believe that when you work hard, you can accomplish your goals. From since I was a young child, I remember my parents telling me I could be and do anything if I put my mind to it. From that moment, I was determined to take advantage of every opportunity that came my way and to try my best at everything. In elementary school, I stayed up late doing extra work, studying and getting excellent grades. Many of my friends asked me why I worried so much about getting good grades when it’s only elementary school and told me doing extra work and going the extra mile was a waste of my time. I explained to them that what they did now would set them up for the rest of their lives. Getting good grades in elementary school places you in higher level classes in middle school, and then in higher level classes in high school, which gets you into a good college. Our whole lives depended on what we did from kindergarten. I was placed in AIG classes in third grade. The teacher in that class treated me horribly, made stereotypical assumptions about me, and made me feel like I didn’t belong there. I started skipping her class because almost every day I did go to her class, I cried when I got home. We had parent-teacher conferences with the principal and that helped a little bit because I could tell this wasn’t her first time getting complained about and she probably feared for her job. This was an obstacle I had to climb over and I had to work even harder to prove myself to her. In seventh grade, I was selected from Duke TIP to participate in their talent search. I had the choice to take the SAT or the ACT and chose the ACT. I was excited to take the test so I could see my results and compare mine to my sister’s because we were competitive and she also participated in the Duke TIP talent search. I went in the room at Broughton High school to take the test. My legs were bouncing up and down and I had to sit on my hands. I took deep breaths and remembered the test taking strategies and advice my dad told me before he dropped me off, “ Do your best and keep track of the time babygirl.” I went in and took the ACT. Fast forward a month and the results come in the mail. I couldn’t wait to see what I had gotten. I see the paper. A bolded 26 was my average. I couldn’t believe it. I had thought I had gotten a 16 or lower because I didn’t feel I did well and my cousin who was very smart had gotten a 17. I couldn’t contain myself! I was jumping up and down and rushed to the phone to call my sister. A week or two later, I found out that I had gotten the highest ACT score in Martin, and one of the highest in Wake County! I was invited to a ceremony at Campbell University where I would be awarded with a certificate and a medal for my great accomplishment. A smile never left my face that day. My parents always told me to do my best, and when I did, there was a great outcome. I plan to go to Yale University like my sister, or another great ivy league school. The only way I can do that is by working hard because when you work hard, it really pays off. |
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