In my book, The Boy in The Striped Pajamas, there are two, nine year old boys, Shmuel and Bruno. Bruno is the son of a Nazi general and has just moved to a new house called "Out-With", which is behind a concentration camp. Shmuel is a jew who has been captured by the Nazis and is being held in a concentration camp. One day Bruno is exploring and finds Shmuel sitting in the dirt on the other side of the fence. Bruno describes Shmuel as sad and skinny, saying that "he had never seen a skinnier or sadder boy in his life." Over the course of a year, Bruno and Shmuel become good friends and meet every afternoon and sit and talk through the fence. Bruno doesn't know why Shmuel is on the other side of the fence and he doesn't know what is happening on that side, but he wishes to go and play with Shmuel and the other boys over there. One day, Bruno's parents tell him that they will be moving back to Berlin and Bruno is very upset as Shmuel is his best friend. So, Bruno and Shmuel make a plan for Bruno to crawl under the fence so they can play before Bruno leaves. Bruno gets on the other side of the fence but it just so happens that that day the Jews were lined up for a march. Bruno and Shmuel and many other men are marched to a building where they are sprayed with poisonous gas and killed. I think this book is very important because it shows how, no matter what religion, race or gender you are you're still human and are no different from anyone else. If Bruno had looked or been any different from the Jews the Nazi soldiers would've known and wouldn't have killed him. I think people should read this book because it has a very powerful meaning and shows that if you put aside all of our differences, we're all human and shouldn't be persecuted for our beliefs. Bruno's Nazi father, even gives up at the end and realizes this, "some soldiers came to Out-With and Father was ordered to go with them, and he went without complaint and he was happy to do so because he didn't really mind what they did to him anymore."
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In the Holocaust, millions and millions of Jews were starved and forced to work for Nazis because of their religion. You were either killed or subjected to the terrible conditions of a concentration camp. Adolf Hitler's goal was to wipe out this whole religion by killing millions and millions of Jews. In Iraq there is a similar thing happening to Christians. ISIS leaders are killing and intending to wipe out all Christians living in Iraq. If you do not worship ISIS' God, Allah, you are killed. Christian "places of worship and holy sites" are being destroyed by ISIS leaders, this is very similar to when the Nazis began destroying Jewish shops and businesses and held Nazi rallies against Jews. In Iraq the Christians are being taken out of their homes and killed for not practicing a certain religion, much like the Jews being persecuted for being Jewish.
I am reading The Boy In The Striped Pajamas by John Boyne and it is a book about the holocaust based on a boy named Bruno and his friend Shmuel. The book is told from both Bruno and Shmuel's point of view. They are both nine years old and live at Out-With. Bruno has just recently moved to Out-With and he doesn't like it much, it's very boring and he says all the children there don't look very friendly. There's a "nasty-looking place" right in his backyard that is fenced in and has "small boys and big boys, fathers and grandfathers." He also describes them as all wearing striped pajamas and caps. Although, Bruno doesn't know what the plave in his backyard really is. He is also not aware that his father is a Nazi general. One day, while Bruno is exploring Out-With, he walks along the fence at the Out-With camp and finds a boy sitting in the grass on the other side of the fence. Bruno introduces himself to the boy who's name is Shmuel. It turns out both Shmuel and Bruno are nine years old and have the same birthday. When Bruno first sees Shmuel he thinks to himself that he's never seen a "skinnier or sadder boy in his life." But Bruno doesn't know why, he also doesn't know what Shmuel is doing on the other side of the fence. I think the point of view that the book is told in, shows how little that the unaffected people during this time know. Even Bruno's older sister (who is around our age) doesn't know what's going on right in their backyard. The storyline of this book is very informative of the holocaust and the people that it affected. Bruno's obliviousness to what is happening to his friend Shmuel really shows how the differing points of views are important to the storyline of the book.
Introduction There are more than 4,000 homeless people in Wake County alone (Raleigh Rescue Mission- Local Statistics 2017). This is a problem because these people don't have a safe place to live or certain resources that they need to survive, like food and hygienic products. This affects us because the homeless may be less fortunate than others, but they are still people and they deserve to have a healthy and safe life like other people. It also affects us because they are living in public areas that aren’t equipped to be used as shelter. We could all be much kinder and make others happy by showing homeless people that we care about their quality of life living on the streets or in a shelter. Life expectancy on the streets is less than 46 years (Raleigh Rescue Mission- Local Statistics 2017). People that live in shelters still don't have the best quality of life that they could if they had a home. They don't have all the resources they need on a daily basis and they can't provide those resources for themselves. Our group is interested in the issue of homelessness because we have all seen someone that is homeless and have wondered how we could help them. We know that they aren't as fortunate as others and we feel the need to help them in some way. It’s hard for us to put ourselves in a homeless person's shoes and understand what it's really like to not have a place to sleep at night. We imagine that it's really hard to go through life without the resources we use every single day and couldn't even think about what life would be like without those resources. This is why we want to help them out. Not many people are aware of the struggles the homeless face, and even if they are they don't really care. We think everyone should care about homelessness because anyone who is homeless is still a human, regardless of if they don't have the products for good hygiene or enough money to buy food. Most people just forget about them and don't understand that they don't have anything or anyone to help them. If we all ban together and help them get their lives into a better state, we will make others happy and make the world a better place. The Issue Homelessness is a big issue for people all over the world. In Wake County, the Raleigh Rescue Mission recorded 4,000 homeless people in total (Raleigh Rescue Mission 2017).That’s 4,000 people that can’t obtain shelter, food, water, and education with ease. For the 2,700 children that are homeless, this means hunger and an unsafe environment. Eighty three percent of children that are homeless are exposed to violence and are four times more likely to get sick than children that aren’t homeless (Raleigh Rescue Mission Local Stats 2017). Homelessness has been a prominent issue in Wake County and especially Raleigh for multiple decades, ever since the 80s, when “contemporary homelessness began,” (Covert 2014). In 2005, Raleigh adopted a ten-year plan to end homelessness, but over ten years later, people are still homeless. Homelessness is caused by many factors like unemployment or drug/alcohol abuse. Homelessness is an issue in Raleigh because not only does it affect the people who are homeless, but it also affects those who aren’t. Homeless ex-offenders who are caught by police get their IDs checked and are written a ticket, which costs additional money because it has to go through the local court system (SLO Homeless 2008). Additionally, public services are very costly to taxpayers. “Homelessness is an economic problem. People without housing are high consumers of public resources and generate expense, rather than income, for the community,” (Homeward Bound 2012). If we don't do anything to help, homelessness may or may not get worse, but if we help, the situation of homelessness will improve drastically. For example, Congress created the National Housing Trust Fund to build affordable housing all over the country, but it was never funded. If funded, an estimated one million affordable homes could be built (Covert 2014). Homelessness could be easily solved if we put in the work to end it. The Solution In Raleigh, there are over 30 homeless shelters, as well as low income housing, and programs dedicated to getting homeless people the help they need (Suntopia 2012). At the Raleigh Rescue Mission they serve about 384 meals per day and have helped over one million homeless people get back on their feet since opening in 1961 (Raleigh Rescue Mission 2017). There are also many other homeless shelters in Wake County that have been helping homeless people. The Salvation Army is a worldwide shelter that has been opened since 1865 and has 7,456 shelters opened across the United States. There are three Salvation Army shelters open in Raleigh. South Wilmington Street Center and Family Promise of Wake County are two local homeless shelters opened to people with no place to go. Although there are several shelters in Raleigh that are opened to kids, Wrenn House is the only homeless shelter in the Triangle for youth. Wrenn House is available to any youth from the age 10-17 and provides these children with “counseling, temporary shelter, case management, and referrals and also teaches them a variety of life skills that they may have been deprived of (Haven House 2016).” Even though there are many shelters open to helping homeless people in Raleigh, 2014 PIT (Point In Time) data suggests that there are still 1,170 people in Wake County without a safe place to sleep (UNC Carolina Demography 2014). Even with the amount of shelters opened, you still occasionally see someone standing on the side of the road with a sign asking for help. This is a well known stereotype for the homeless, but there are many other people that you may know that are homeless. Statistics show that 2,736 Wake County students are homeless (Raleigh Rescue Mission 2017). Someone you may care about could be homeless and you would never even know. Volunteering and donating to a homeless shelter could affect somebody close to you in a very good way. Helping people in need is very important, because you could be saving the life of your classmate or the person walking by you on the street. Conclusion Our service project is centered in helping homeless people that live in our area. Something anyone could do to help is giving a homeless person some money or food. You could also volunteer at a local homeless shelter. Lastly, you could collect donations to give to a homeless shelter or to a homeless person. They could really benefit from us giving them certain things they need to live. We are planning to volunteer at Raleigh Rescue Mission, a local homeless shelter. We are planning to make care packages, and give them to the homeless people staying at the shelter. Then we would like to volunteer at Raleigh Rescue Mission by organizing clothing or anything else that the shelter would like us to do. The requirements to participate for children is to be older than ten, but they have to be with an adult or a person over eighteen to volunteer. To get to the shelter, we plan to have a few parents drive the people that are volunteering in groups. Raleigh Rescue Mission is open from 9a.m- 5p.m on weekdays. We want to advertise that we are planning to make care packages so that people will donate things that could be put into the packages. We would like to put toothpaste, toothbrushes, and other hygienic products into the care packages. We would assemble the packages at school in the morning and later leave to volunteer for a couple hours. Our goal is to make at least 20 care packages for the people at the shelter. If we were trying to do this as a class we would need to discuss all points of the project. You would need to know about the transportation to get to Raleigh Rescue Mission. You would also need to know the qualifications you need to be able to volunteer there. We would also need to discuss the donations that would need to be made to the class so we could make our care packages. Lastly, we would have to look at the number of people that could volunteer at once and what we would do to go in groups. Our goal is to help people at the shelter, the workers and the homeless. We want to make the homeless people happy by giving them things that they could use, but don't necessarily have easy access to. By volunteering, we would make the jobs of the workers easier by taking some of the workload off of their hands. We will know if we accomplished this when we have helped the people at the shelter. We will also be accomplished if we get a good amount of things to donate. Helping the homeless is very important to us and we hope that we will be successful in this community service project. In Wake County there are over 2,736 students that are homeless. Even with all the homeless shelters many have long waiting lists. People that are homeless are just as human and as normal as anybody else , they're just deprived of food, shelter and hygienic products. It's very unfair that anybody doesn't have access to these essentials. I think as a community and school we should strive to help these people get the help that they need. Many shelters allowed volunteers as young as us, to help out in the kitchen and many other things. We could also make care packages or donate money to these shelters.
In North Carolina there has been a lot of controversy over the past year about House Bill Two. Otherwise known as HB2, House Bill Two prohibits transgender people who have not undergone surgery or legally changed their gender, from using the bathroom of the gender they identify as. This law discriminates against the majority of transgender people who cannot afford or who haven't undergone reassignment surgery. This bill has affected many students statewide and even here in Raleigh. In an interview done by North Carolina Public Radio, Hunter Schafer, a transgender woman who previously attended Broughton High School explains how she is breaking the law every time she uses the bathroom. Hunter was born a boy but now identifies as a female and uses the girls bathroom at school. I'm personally interested in this topic because this could be affecting people that attend Martin, even if they aren't open about it, as the bill affects many public school students in North Carolina. Many LGBT rights activists have been protesting about the issue and there have been many rallies focused on the bill. I don't really think there's anything we can do, except protest but I think the bill should still be up for discussion.
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May 2017
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