미지센터의 청소년 국제교류이야기

          What volunteer services are you involved in your spare time? Do you want to be involved? If you do, I’ll introduce you an organization suitable for you and if you do not want to be involved, I’ll inform you of a shocking news that will persuade you to participate in curing a cause. Having experienced this organization, I have realized the positive aspects of this organization and would like to recommend it rather than recommending an organization without experience and only based on facts.

          Did you know the fact that one person becomes blind every 5 seconds and one child becomes blind every minute? About 180 million people in the world have low vision and among them, 45 million are legally blind. Among these 45 million people, 80% of their blindness can be avoided by proper treatment or prevention. Also, 50% of this blindness are caused by cataract, which is curable through surgery. According to WHO, blindness from cataract will reach 50 million by 2020 and 90% of them will be from less developed countries. Their vision could be fully restored with only $120 of medical supplies and one fully equipped ophthalmologist team. (provided by WHO).
       

     There are many community service groups that work towards curing this issue. However, having experiences in one organization, I would like to deal with one organization in particular, which is Vision Care Service and its associate group, Vision Care Global Youth. 

     Vision Care Global Youth (VCGY) is under an adult organization Vision Care Service, which is an organization working along with IAPB under WHO. It promotes many eye sight restoring campaign inside their capability. They go on street campaigns where they can let others aware of this shocking news and receive donations. They also hold annual concerts in order to collect massive amounts of money that will be used for eye surgery of those who are in need. Also, there are small units who work in their schools. They use their lunch time and time after schools to let the cause be widely known and receive even the smallest donation including 100 won. 

          For students who are not yet ready to be out in the society, schools are a small version of the society that they could fulfill what they want. Therefore, they have campaigning activities in school in order to raise money. They know that school is not going to give them much money but it is most valuable experience. Even though this community service group was created in order to help blind people in Africa, it provides teenagers opportunities to be leaders pulling everything related to the organization together. 

          Vice President of theVCGY in Korea International School, Chloe Song, said “this activity has made me to earn more experience in leading other fellow students which is beneficial for my life because leadership is a helpful quality.”
          Member of VCGY, Peter Kim, has also stated “this community service provides experience valuable to everyone no matter what you would like to become because there are variety of work needed including designing to keep financials organized.” 

          Many members of VCGY feel satisfied with their work and the thought that they are saving someone pleases them.  Anyone willing to help support this cause could visit the website www.vcgy.org.

 

 

 There was an ISWEEP science fair held in Texas. There, I have presented a project that tested on miniature houses to see which plants does its function of cooling and heating the best. There were three different plants used in this experiment; Sedum, English Ivy and Winter Berry. These were all succulent plants meaning that they store massive amounts of water in themselves. Therefore, the water doesn’t evaporate which will not take heat away from the house. This keeps the house warm during the winter. Also, plants in general have roots that tie tightly with each other. These protection of soil will keep the house cool and prevent the sunlight from heating the roof too much.
 
 Planting these plants definitely have a massive effect in saving the costs of air conditioning and heating.The plant that was represented as most effective was Sedum because it was a succulent plant with more water storing capacity which means that it can store massive amounts of water in the roots compared to the other plants to even survive in the desert. 

The reason I started this experiment was because of the concern that our earth is going to get destroyed. Like in the movie 2012, a disaster due to Global Warming could kill all of the mankind and bring end to this world. Therefore, we all need to keep this in mind and come up with some other way that we could prevent Global Warming from proliferating. 

 Then, what is Global Warming and its effects? Why are people conducting these experiments and putting so much effort into it? Global Warming is a phenomenon that occurs when earth’s hemisphere is destroyed by the CO2 released by human constructed machinery including automobiles, refrigerators, heating devices and air conditioning. The sunlight shines strongly through these holes in the hemisphere and therefore causes earth to overheat. By Global Warming, glaciers in North and South Pole melt down and some countries like Maldives will drown due to excessive amounts of water melted from the glaciers. This might not seem very devastating to us who is not the natives living in Maldives but it definitely will affect most of us soon or later. 

Everyone as a citizen inside the earth has to gather strength and effort in order to prevent Global Warming from advancing any further. There has also been a research done by Michigan University if green roofs save excretion of CO2 by decreasing heating and air conditioning prior to the Science Fair research project. The result was that plants on top of the roofs do cool down the houses and warm the houses depending on the outside temperature. 

Other than these experiments, there are many more experiments being done to protect our earth and to save the human kind from becoming extinct over time. Everyone should take action in the way they can to save the earth even by walking instead of driving cars. These issues are the ones that bring everyone on the earth as one and we should all help prevent this cause. 

 Of course it is not very easy for the students themselves to do such experiments to save the earth. However, that is what ISWEEP is for! ISWEEP ables students to show what they have researched in front of the judges who are experts of those category. This competition is held every year in Texas and international students are also eligible to attend. You have to register the topic of your experiment in detail first and the organization informs you if you can come to the Texas competition or not. When you get qualified for the Texas competition, you go and you can earn medals at the same time show other scientists what experiments could be done. The website for this fabulous competition is http://www.isweeep.org. This is a wonderful way to contribute to the earth. Everyone should try submitting their work to this.