Poverty

I don't know what it is like to live in poverty, and I am very thankful for that. But I do know that a lot of people DO know what it is like, and that makes me at least a little sad. GoodMagazine has posted a great article about why people who don't see or experience poverty may not be the right people to come up with solutions. I agree with the article way too much. So many people think that they know the solution to other people's problems without realizing the full extent of the problem. While sometimes the answer is to just read more, or try harder in school, usually that's not actually a viable solution to a poverty issue. The story in this article about the boy getting suspended so that he could prevent his mother from prostituting herself is so incredible, and I want to go back and see what happened to the family afterward. Did the boy get taken away from his mother? Did she woman get arrested?

While I sometimes question my stance on the Occupy movement that is so popular right now, this article brings to light the "solutions" that many people have come up with for that movement as well.

Sometimes though, the answer to the question is not just "work harder" sometimes there's something else holding you back, or something that is MORE important than finding a job, or getting good grades in school, or whatever. We may never know what all of these problems are, but we should at least try to not look at the visible problems (poverty, unemployment, etc) on its own.

Also, here is a link to the Forbes "If I were a poor black kid" article, and one to another response. I think they both definitely add to the first article!














R

Breast Cancer Awareness

I'm not going to say much, but I love the campaign that DDB created for Associacao de Luta Contra o Cancer in Mozampique! Super heroes are women too, they need to do regular monthly exams! I know it's not breast cancer awareness month any more, but I am totally changing my Facebook cover photo to the Wonder Woman one!

I'll leave you with a couple of examples that I like best, but follow the links in the Boing Boing article above to see them all!




R

Legos or Barbies?

So, it is a strange day when every single one of my blogs write about the same thing. SO I just figured I HAD to write about it. It says something when it is at least something fairly relevant to my life.

Apparently Lego is making new Legos, for girls! These Legos are curvier, girlier, and a lot more human looking than normal Legos. The part I like the most is that they are taller than the regular Lego and have a much more Barbie-like face. Either way, these articles are interesting, do we really need a Lego for girls? Can't girls just use regular Legos, and there's a store in the UK that is integrating boy toys and girl toys! I love it, even though I played with Barbies forever, I still loved to play with toy cars, and dig stuff up and build train set too. I think the gender-specific toys tend to push children into a corner instead of allowing them to develop the way they want. Who says girls have to like pink curvy Legos, maybe they just want to build things! (However, I did love Polly Pockets.. maybe these would be just as good if not WAY better)

R

Volunteering

I remember in high school when my English teacher told me that it is very important to have extracurriculars and volunteer activities on college applications. I don't know how much the small amount of these activities helped me get into college, but I hope that it is true these are helping. According to this article in Good Magazine (of course...) volunteering is becoming more and more important on college applications. But more so: dedication to a volunteer activity. So start sending students out to volunteer somewhere once a week, or a couple hours a month. Not only does that help their college applications (hopefully) it gives them more friends and helps the community more than just the occasional volunteer hour. 

R

Keep your legs closed!

 

I have only taken Plan B once. Maybe that's too much information about my life, but I had a similar experience to many of the girls in this article. It was scary, frustrating, and mostly embarrassing to have to go ask the pharmacist for it. But I can't imagine what it would be like if I had to get a prescription from a doctor to do it, and I am still grateful that Plan B is available at the pharmacy down the road. The condom broke, we were trying to be safe, and so we took precautions to protect ourselves afterward. I still felt judged by the lady at the counter next to me, but I am a strong independent woman, and I should be allowed to choose my sexual endeavors, as long as I am safe and choose wisely. However, I do feel that even today there is little education on how these pills work and when they should be used. They should NOT be a normal form of birth control, your body can really only handle so much of that, but they should NOT be hard to get access to. Anyone who needs a "morning after" pill should have access to them, otherwise we are perpetuating the problem of unsafe and unprepared sexual adventures that people are too shy to take care of. We need to provide better education to our youth about sex in all forms, but protection from STDs and from pregnancy is one place that we still (even though that's the only thing talked about in many sex ed classes) barely scrape the surface on.

R