Reflection International Day (revised)
International Day (Nov. 6th, 2008)
On the November 6th, we, SSIS, have celebrated International day under the name, “A Day in the World’s Shoes.” On that day, the entire middle high school have celebrated this day talking and doing activities that involve in the first UN millennium goal, eradicate extreme poverty. The school has invited special guests from Hong Kong, the charity under the name of Crossroads. The main guess from Crossroads, Mr. David J, has given a speech that is both hilarious, in some ways, at the same time, very sad, and depressing that there are still about 20% of the world’s population still living under extreme poverty. After Mr. David J’s speech, the middle and high school moved on towards doing stimulations and activities that involves stepping in one people that living in extreme poverty and experiencing what it is like living like them.
The high school started off the day doing physical activities with Mr. Murphy and the leadership class, and the middle school started with the simulations with Crossroads. Crossroad’s simulation was that to make paper bags, from newspaper and a mixture of flour and water, and sell them to shopkeepers to make a living. This activity teaches us that people actually make paper bags for living for a lifetime. This has really shocked me because here I am living with all the access I have, Internet, proper sanitation, etc…and there are about 1 billion people still out there in this world don’t have any of these accesses. What also really shocked me even more was that an average person can make 200 paper bags a day, but for 200 paper bags, they only earn TWENTY-FIVE CENTS. That’s really sad. That means that if 4 people make 800 paper bags, they would all earn only 1 DOLLAR. I was really shocked about it. It didn’t end there though; we had to work by making paper bags and sell them to buy food. However, food wasn’t the only supply we needed to pay. We had to pay for our rent and sanitation, so you can see that it’s very hard already for us to pay all of these rents and fees, imagine what would be it feels like for the other 1 billion people still living under these conditions.
After the simulation, Middle and High school all came down to the atrium to have lunch and the lunch really surprised all of the students, including me. All of the school had for lunch was … some rice, boiled cabbage; a piece of potato, carrots, and some plain ice tea (wasn’t sweetened). This lunch was meant to let us know that a lot of people are eating like this in the world.
After lunch, the middle school moved to the gym to listen to a presentation made by an East meets West organization member that has came to our school to give us some ideas on what our school and East meets West are doing and we learned that the school and the organization are planning to build a new school with bathrooms, etc… It was a really idea to build a school near Dong Nai because it is where some students are still having some trouble finding education. Right after the speech was over, homerooms was divided up into 3 groups and each group could do two out of the three activities that the leadership class has provided, I was in Ms. Li’s homeroom so we were in group 3 and our first activity was in the gym. Each of us is given a disability and we have to cross over the “bridge” in order to win the game. It was a lesson to teach us how people in the world have these disability but they are still able to corporate together to do something. Our second activity was out on the hot soccer field. It was a very competitive activity because we have to run to get our supplies for surviving against poverty. It taught us really about how people living extreme poverty compete for resources for their survival. The other activity that our group didn’t do was the water transfer activity which really, I had to no idea what was the moral of it.
After the leadership class’s activities, Grade 8 proceeded up to room A401 to listen to a presentation by the Global Issues group. In this presentation, I have really learned a lot about how stereotypes affect people lives across the globe. Also, I and my whole grade get to be a different person, not us but someone else divided by each class and I have learned that there are 4 different classes of wealth in this world. The 4 classes are, poorest the poor, working poor, middle income, and wealthy. These classes have different percentage of people in it except poorest of the poor and wealthy.
After all of those activities, we all proceeded back to the auditorium and finally listened to the final speech, again, from Mr. David J, as he thanked us and explained to us all how we could all help to fight against this world poverty.
