CO2 Presentation

 I'm taking a course called "Water" I had to make a slide show on Global Warming. I'm talking about the effects of Global Warming by researching current data and how it is in a certain area (Elliott Key, FL). The most challenging thing about this slide show was making it and finding the information. The thing I liked the most about was finding out how important it is, and how we need to stop letting out so much CO2 in the air.

                  

Save Mother Natures Creation!

                                                        NVA, " Future Water Life"  10-17-13, Chicago: GCE

In this MDG project I had to write a poem about water resources for wildlife. The most challenging part about this getting my data in the poem without it sounding very boring. Another challenge was doing my interview with the Friends of the Chicago River, which toke me three days to get done.The thing I liked the most was creating my visual.


Animals, plants, humans
Mother natures pride jewels...

Humans not so much.


We are wrecking every single cycle that nature has created,
We cut down her forests and jungles,
We pollute her waters,
We kill her animals!

Polluting her waters has done the most damage
We have even hurt ourselves by this
Toxins are put in are water everyday,
The level of toxins put in lake superior have double every 3-4 years, since 1980-2000,
There are 362 chemical contaminants in the great lakes, ⅓ have effects on wildlife,
20% of the shoreline of the great lakes are due to sediment contamination.


What we need to do now!, is STOP putting toxins in the lakes,
The Friends of the Chicago River have started to help do this and many other organizations,
They are doing more than people think and we need to take action and help them,
You can also help out in forest preserves, and build little homes for the animals in that live in the area,
They are doing their part in helping us restore mother nature are you going to?


REFERENCES:

“Issues” Friends of the Chicago River, n.d.

“Toxic Substances control: Falling the Great Lakes” Safer chemical Healthy Family Resources, n.d.

MDG letter to Sen. Al Fraken

                                                      NVA "Wage Gap" n.d Chicago: GCE



For this MDG action project I had write a letter to a senator, about gender inequality. I wrote about general jobs of men and women wage gaps. The most challenging part was finding a country with better wage gaps to compare. The thing I liked the most was learning how many women aren't paid the way they should be.  The purpose of this was to show how women are still not treated the way men are, everywhere.



3 October, 2013

Sen. Al Franken
P.O. Box 583144
Minneapolis, MN 55458-3144

Dear Senator Franken,

Hello, my name is NVA, and I am a student at Global Citizenship Experience (GCE) High School in Chicago. I have a class called MDGs & You, and we study the Millennium Development Goals - the United Nations’ targets for addressing the greatest challenges to humanity. We are learning about gender inequality in the U.S. and how women are treated as second class citizens. I am writing to you, because you deal with people's’ jobs and how they are dealt with, and this a huge thing that I as a U.S. citizen is not being taken care of correctly.

I chose to write about women’s salaries in everyday jobs. Women in the United States today are not treated the way they should be in their work places, on TV, or even in general. In a city, women have jobs everywhere and they might even have the same education, experience, and skills as men but they don’t get the same salary! Today women, on average, earn 35%-45% less than male workers in the same jobs. On average, the weekly median salary for women workers is $648 while the men’s is $832. Our nation’s history shows this has been going for years and the government has not done enough to help women. We need to do more for women and give them the pay they have earned. 

To see how unjust our nation’s practices are, I compared these U.S. statistics to another country’s so we might learn how we can reduce the wage gaps in the United States. In Australia, gender wage gaps are only 14.5-17%. Australians show their belief in progress toward equality in their actions. It said on the website, “women were awarded the same rate of pay as men - no matter what work they were doing, as long as it was assessed as comparable in value.” For some jobs in Australia, women get higher pay than men do, depending how good they are. In some areas the gap is only 5.9-4.9%.I am aiming at the generally jobs that women and men get, like labor or teacher. I want us to look at them and not copy their system, but I think that we should at least take some thoughts into mind from what they have done.

In conclusion, our government needs to take charge and realize that women aren't being respectfully paid or treated. We need to look at Australia to see some of the ways, one way they actually lower the wage gap is by commonly hiring a women that is smarter and more useful in the workforce. Another way they have successfully worked on this target was by passing many Acts that say women must have equal pay if they show as good work as the do men.


Thank You,
NVA

REFERENCES

“ Gender Pay Gap Statistic “ Australian Government, Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Feb, 2013.

“ Male-Female Income Disparity in the US “ n.p., Wikipedia, 30 August, 2013.

“ Gender Pay Gap in Australia “ n.p., Wikipedia, 4 September, 2013.

 

NVA's "Schoolmade" Water Filtration System

 

HT(2013) 30 September, 2013. Chicago: GCE

 

In my second action project for my Water course, I had to create a filtration system that was supposed to clean pond water. To make my filtration system, I used a gallon water container to hold layers of materials. In my container (from bottom to top), I put cotton, sand, gravel, and dirt.  I also placed a jar under the container to hold and collect the filtered water.  The dirt I collect was from my backyard; the sand, gathered from a sandbag; and the gravel, from a old fish tank. The water was retrieved from my pond in my backyard.

When making a filtration system, collect supplies. Then, cut open the bottom of the water container. Next, stuff in 2 hands full of cotton.  Then add the gravel on top of the cotton.  Next, put 12 scoops of sand on top of the gravel.  Top the sand with 5 big scoops of dirt.  After layering materials in this manner, poke a hole in the cap with some scissors.   Set the bottle on a jar. Lastly, pour the water through. I thought my filtration system would work well, because all the supplies that are on my materials list are very common. Also, I knew that the carbon would work because many common water filters use carbon to clean water.  I also learned in my class that activated carbon binds to the impurities in the water.  Another reason I had a feeling my system would work is because ground filtration uses dirt, gravel, and sand in the ground to catch big chunks of bacteria. I chose not drink the filtered water, because I didn’t want to get sick from an ineffective filter.

Prior to filtration, I observed the water to be a dark greenish color (pH 5).  After filtration, I observed the water to be a light green color.  I could also see that the layers in the filter removed big chunks of debris from the water, because the debris would get stuck in the layers, while the water would drain through the gaps in the materials.  When I added a pinch of activated carbon to the water and filtered it through coffee filters, the water turned clearer.  When I measured my final pH at the end of the filtration, it was a pH of 6.  In other words, the water turned more basic after filtration,  -log[0.001]

REFERENCES

“ Water Purification” n.p. Practical Primitive, May/June 2010.  Web. Retrieved 1 Oct 2013.

“ How To Make A Water Filter” n.p. Wilderness Survival Skills, 2013. Web. Retrieved 1 Oct 2013