Chicago Botanic Garden Profile by NVA

In this essay, I will explain how the Chicago Botanic Garden helps people that are in need for jobs, food or even education. The class I'm taking is called MDGs, which means Millennium Development Goals. This class focuses on the problems that are going on today as we speak. Many people don't realize this, but many countries are suffering from many different things. In this project, we had to pick an organization in Chicago, and how it can help one of the MDGs that are going on today. I'm proud to see that people in Chicago and organizations all around the world are helping people with many different problems. I learned that, probably, more than half the word has problems that not many people are taking care of.

 

PAWAR, Sandeep (2010) A Color Evening. Chicago: Flickr. 

For this project I had to chose an organization that addressed an MDG target. The target I chose was Target 1.B: "Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people". The Chicago Botanic Garden (CBG) helps address this by actually giving teens and adults with no experience jobs to help keep their garden pure and beautiful. But the people who work there don't just work in an office. They let teachers bring their students to learn more about their garden, and how it feels to be in an all-natural place. So people from all different CPS schools come to see and learn more about the garden. The garden promotes families to come and live the experience of gardening in the fun way. In Maslow's theory I think this would fall into the self-esteem level, because this can make a person feel good and tell themselves that if they work hard and do their job they will get an award which would be money and then people can use that money to buy things that are needed to survive. The CBG can actually help more MDG problems than people think. It can help people who are young get jobs, help people who live on a dollar a day, and also give education to people on how important their world actually is. The CBG will hire anyone who is willing to work hard, even if they have no experience working in a garden before.

 

I think CBG does effectively address the MDG target, because the target is about getting everyone a job, so they can have money to make a living and even get a better job. The CBG website says that "we get more than 60 high school students 15-18 ages that want to help out and get their money the old fashion way”. Also, if someone works there for a couple of years, they have a lot of new job opportunities, because of all the new skills they have learned while working at the garden. They learn how to manage the plants, keeping the garden under control. They learn how to sell products, and they learn cooking skills. That can open so many job opportunities. Another job that it enforces is building; the CBG website had a video explaining that students had to build a fence to keep bunnies out from eating the food. Also, if the students do good, they get to have some of the fruits and vegetables that they grow there.

 

The Botanic Garden can actually help the community a lot, and more people have great jobs from working at the garden.  They give students that aren't in the best condition food to bring home for their families. In conclusion, The CBG can do more for people than we think.

 

REFERENCES:

CHICAGO BOTANICAL GARDEN (1997) CBG Website. Chicago: Forest Preserves of Cook County.

 

My Daily Water Usage vs. the UK

For the Water course, I calculated my daily water usage and compared it to the daily water usage in the UK. Then, I created a poster with the data I collected.

On my poster, there is a man who is supposed to be me and the will have my four categories (Hygiene, Bathroom, Cleaning, and Drinking), with all the gallons and percentages next to the man. Next to that I have a picture of the UK and the categories with the gallons with the percentages.

I would help save water by taking shorter showers and not leaving the water on while I'm brushing my teeth, which I think is a bad habit to get into. Also, when I'm cleaning, I use a lot more water then I need. If I do this, I can help the world be a better place, so people don't use too much water.  I would tell people how much they use to help them use less as well.

Research shows that 63% of water in the UK is used for hygiene, 21% for cleaning, 12% for outdoor things, and 4% for drinking.  My water usage came out to 52 gals to Hygiene, 6 gals to bathroom, 4 gals to cleaning, and 1 gal to drinking water.  In conclusion, I found that people in many countries (the U.S. being a huge one) use much more water than we really need. We just think we need that much. The UK also uses a lot of water, but not nearly as much as the U.S. 

 

NVA. (2013) Water Consumption Poster. Chicago: GCE.