Monday, April 9, 2012
To Police Forces Across America
I have a simple question: what stops me from never seeing my eighteenth birthday, or even my seventeenth? This question has been asked may times over by the African American community, and we still do not have a satisfactory answer. We are only given promises and momentary victories, and it repeatedly shows in the sudden and unforeseen deaths of both the old and the young. When will we be able to walk where we wish to walk without such risk, or smile upon enforcement officials in genuine respect, and not fear? If we cannot trust the police to help us when we are murdered by the common man, how can we expect them to help us when they are the murderers themselves?
I’m going to be honest. I feel very uneasy whenever I see a police officer, or a member of the armed forces. It is not because I am doing anything suspicious, or that I am in danger, it is because I do not know what to expect from these people. In short, I do not feel that my safety is guaranteed, or that my life will be valued and protected. This is not the feeling that I want to have, or that I should have. Protectors of the people should not inspire fear, uncertainty, and feelings of insecurity. The fact that they do in the eyes of not just myself, but many people throughout several communities throughout the country implies that there has been a failure regarding the public image and private practices of protection-related agencies across throughout. Should you value the opinions and support of the people that you protect, then it would certainly help to start by changing your image drastically.
What you do at this point is entirely up to you. The public cannot change your image for you. The choices that you make from here on will shape many things, and not just your image in the eyes of the public. The easiest and best way to go about it would be to do what’s right. Ultimately, it is still your choice, not ours.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Children and Disaster Situations
" * Preschoolers—thumb sucking, bedwetting, clinging to parents, sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, fear of the dark, regression in behavior, and withdrawal from friends and routines.
* Elementary School Children—irritability, aggressiveness, clinginess, nightmares, school avoidance, poor concentration, and withdrawal from activities and friends.
* Adolescents—sleeping and eating disturbances, agitation, increase in conflicts, physical complaints, delinquent behavior, and poor concentration.
A minority of children may be at risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Symptoms can include those listed above as well as re-experiencing the disaster during play and/or dreams; anticipating or feeling that the disaster is happening again; avoiding reminders of the disaster; general numbness to emotional topics; and increased arousal symptoms such as inability to concentrate and startle reactions. Although rare, some adolescents may also be at increased risk of suicide if they suffer from serious mental health problems like PTSD or depression. Again, adults should seek professional mental health help for children exhibiting these symptoms. "
These are the kind of children who need HappyPacks, who need joy at this time. These children may survive the disaster, but what is the point if you do not feel happy?
Links to two of the articles have been included below.
http://www.nasponline.org/resources/crisis_safety/naturaldisaster_ho.aspx
http://mentalhealth.samhsa.gov/publications/allpubs/SMA95-3022/default.asp
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Concert Trouble...
Sunday, May 2, 2010
An Update on the Latest Project, Saving the Harlem School of the Arts, and the launch of an Updated Website!
Our plans were put on hold because a beloved institution by the name of the Harlem School of the Arts was threatening to close down. The Harlem School of the Arts is an institution for children that was founded by Opera singer Dorthy Maynor. The school started in a church basement, and eventually moved to the building next to the church.
A lack of funds emerged, and the school was almost closed. What saved the school was the combined efforts of staff, parents, and children. Children put up signs, wrote letters to the media and the board members, and participated in rallies.
This goes to show that not only can kids have a major role in saving a school, but also that they can have a major role in anything that they deem important. This is what OnEartHeart is about. Showing kids that yes, they CAN make a difference in anything that they put their mind to. I would like to personally congratulate the kids of the Harlem School of the Arts for caring about their school and its closing, and doing something about it.
In other news, an updated OnEartHeart website will be launched soon! You will be able to check it out very soon at www.oneartheart.org!
Friday, February 5, 2010
Help for Haiti
One Word, One Earth, One Heart. OnEartHeart. Together, we can make anything happen.
Monday, October 19, 2009
OnEartHeart is back in action!
For this term our main focus is a "HappyPack of Books" event for children in long term hospital care units. For all of you Yankee fans, Mr. Ray Negron, a New York Times Bestselling Author of childrens books, and personal consultant to George Steinbrenner of the New York Yankees, will be joining us. www.batboyhelps.com/author-ray-negron-2.html. He will be signing his latest book "One Last Time: Goodbye to Yankee Stadium" and has offered to add copies of his books The Boy of Steel: A Baseball Dream Come True (#2 on the NY Times Bestseller List) and The Greatest Story Never Told: The Babe and Jackie, to the HappyPack of Books. So save your books, join us, and pass them on. Make sure to check the blog for the date of the HappyPack book drive. It will be around Thanksgiving, which is an excellent time to reflect on what we have, and what we can do to improve the lives of others. I will keep you posted!
We will be going back to the Vo Flor orphanage in order to give more gifts to the children there. If you did not donate the first time around, now is your chance! When we went the first time, the children all lined up and we gave out HappyPacks www.youtube.com/watch?v=dccnJ2oFsps
However, by the time we reached the end of the line, there were not enough HappyPacks for the small group of girls who had patiently waited at the end of the line. There were more children at the Orphanage than we expected, but Asha and Jasmine from Saint Ann's, as well as Jonathan from Stuyvesant, started giving out their personal belongings to the children. Although they were very happy with what we were able to give them, we know that they were still disappointed at the fact that they still did not get a HappyPack. The kids lined up in a certain order, and whoever was in the back would not be getting anything. The little boys were first, then the big boys, then little girls, and then the big girls. It was very unfortunate that we did not have any more packs for the last few children. So, because of this, the next trip will be centered around Happy Packs for these Teen Girls. The next trip will be in December. You can also find out about upcoming tours for 2010 by contacting the Founder of Art Helping Life, Sherri Donovan donovassoc@aol.com or Velly Bahia at vellybahia@gmail.com.
Check here www.vellybahia.com, for more information on the trip.
Brazil is truly an amazing place.
On our trip to the Vo Flor orphanage, we saw the rooms that the children used to sleep in. Where there used to be beds are now empty spaces. The government may shut the orphanage down, because Lady Vo Flor cannot afford to keep doctors on the premises, and there is not enough space for each child to have their own room. I saw only 2 bedrooms in the building. One for the girls and one for the boys. The government now requires that each child has his or her own room. How do they expect her to go from 2 rooms to 50 rooms with no resources? The only people who help her are neighbors and friends, and people like us. She needs money in order to buy the building, and possibly make more rooms inside. She has to chase away the kids at 5:00, because they cannot stay there if she does not follow the new rules and regulations. The choices for the kids are to either stay on the streets, or go to the facilities that the government is providing. They choose to come back every day, because Lady Vo Flor, who they affectionately call Grandma, is the only person that ever showed them love, or made them feel appreciated. In fact, the name Vo Flor means Lovely Grandmother. Those kids need her. She is their only mother. Could you imagine leaving the only place you know as home for the night, and being alone on the streets? It's not a very happy thought. That's why we need to help these children. They go through our nightmares every day. They don't have a mother or father to guide them and reassure them, all they have are each other and a kind old lady who opened up her heart for these children on the street.
These private run facilities don't care about the kids, they just care about the cash. For every child that they have inside, they get paid. The kids are just another resource for money. They aren't loved, they aren't cared for, they're just kept.
This is what OnEartHeart is about. KIDS Helping KIDS!!
Read more about OnEartHeart www.oneartheart.com/
Monday, August 24, 2009
Our Next Project in Fall '09
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Trip to Brazil!
We gave Happy Packs to the children at the Vo Flor orphanage there, and the entire experience was wonderful. Happy Packs are Backpacks filled with things that make children happy. In this case, they were art supplies. The children were very polite, and they had big smiles on their faces when they opened the bags. They were so surprised because they thought that they were just getting backpacks. But when they opened them, and saw that they were literally filled to the top with art supplies, they just lit up. However, there were more children at the orphanage then we expected, and the little ones lined up first. By the time we got to the 12-14 year old girls, we did not have anything left, but we were still able to find something to give them. Velly Bahia (vellybahia@gmail.com, vellybahia.com), our tour guide, is going back to Bahia in August, and we would like to send with him Happy Packs for teen girls. This time it will be a joint collaboration between kids in Brazil, and kids in America. We carried 300+ pounds of Happy Packs on the plane with us, and the entire operation was successful. Thank you children of Saint Ann’s School. Thank you children of the Harlem School of the Arts, Thank you children of the Bronx. Thank you to my little cousin Trinity in Michigan. Trinity is our youngest member at the age of 6. I would also like to give a special thanks to Yonbue of the Bronx who gave us about 100 stuffed toys. We really did it. Just kids helping kids. You can see what we did on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dccnJ2oFsps.
Salvador was absolutely amazing. I have never seen anything like it. The streets rise and fall in layers, and all the streets are paved with cobblestones. The houses there are all connected, and the narrow streets make you feel like you are in an entirely different place. Cars can barely drive around the city, but yet seem to slip through somehow. We went to a square there, and the amount of activity is incredible! People dance, and sell things, and there are amazing buildings there as well. We also took a drive through the countryside, and it feels like a different world. We did not even need to speak the language of the people there to have a great time. I met wonderful people there, and although I could not speak their language, I could communicate with them, and I knew that they were great people. We danced with them, swam with them, played with them, and it did not require language. The children there are just like us. We meet with a group of kids, and we played with them, traveled with them, and all kinds of things. We tried to teach them English, and they tried to teach us Portuguese, this is how Flag Friends are created. Some of our first Flag Friends will be from Bahia. Check out what Flag Friends are about at www.oneartheart.com. I really did not want to go home. I hope to go back there again soon!
A few weeks later, Velly was still in Bahia. Two kids passed him on the street and said, “Velly! Where’s Kiki?” They were still wearing their backpacks.
YouTube link!
Enjoy!
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
I mainly talked about plastic and how it is severely hurting our environment. Plastic takes 10,000 years to bio-degrade (that means to rot). Plastic Polymers NEVER bio-degrade. We should be using plastic for things that we want to keep forever, but instead we are using it for things that we throw away in a few minutes. Plastic shopping bags just waste plastic and oil. They float in our oceans, drift across our streets, and kill our animals. How can we fix this? The answer is simple. Buy re-usable bags. This goes beyond just reducing plastic consumption, it also gets rid of greenhouse gases by slowing production at the factories, and saves oil that can be put towards powering cars and homes.
The worst are plastic garbage bags. We create them to throw them away. We MUST find alternatives. The bags just sit under the ground and stay there. They trap heat inside of them, causing the garbage to rot, releasing Methane, a greenhouse gas. Maybe we can try a bio-degradable alternative, or develop a system to eliminate plastic bags altogether. Think about it!
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Plastic
But they're not just bad pollution wise, it takes more oil to make 1,000,000 plastic bags than it does to power 1,000,000 cars. How could we stop this? We could stop this by using re-usable bags that are made of Eco-friendly materials.Let's solve this problem!
~~K
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
It's Time to Sign Up!
Friday, November 14, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Website online soon!
Friday, May 2, 2008
The Second Step
Saturday, April 19, 2008
The First Step
Monday, April 14, 2008
More About Me! :)
BIO
My name is Kimani, and I am 12 years old. I live in Bronx, New York City, NY, and have lived there for most of my life. I go to school in Brooklyn, and I am in 6th grade. I take a special interest in science, and especially astronomy. I am also interested in history, especially Egyptology. I play the piano, the flute, the gyll (an African xylophone), steel pan, and a little bit of the djembe (an African drum). I like to play outside, read, and occasionally, watch a little bit of TV and play video games. When I grow up, I want to be an astronomer and astrophysicist. I have an interest in the environment. This is something that I care a lot about, and nothing can stop me from caring about it. When I was 5 years old, I realized that there was something wrong with the environment, and I wanted to help fix it. I thought that adults were messing up the world, and when the next generation takes over, there will not be much left for us to have, and it will be difficult enough just to pick up the pieces. I thought up something called One Earth Heart. One Earth Heart is an organization that is dedicated to saving the environment and helping mankind meet it’s goal. We are at a crucial turning point in history, and we need to make sure that everyone is correct in choices as we keep walking. I have always been disturbed at the unfairness of the world, and One Earth Heart is here to correct that too. There are certain places in the world that do things to get food that other places in the world would not even dream about doing, but they have to do it, even though they might not like it either. If they don’t do it, there might not be any other way to get food for your family. Some of these things involve children doing strange or extreme things, like fighting each other at the age of 5 to put food on the table for their families. This is the kind of unfairness that One Earth Heart hopes to vanquish.
